e tray by Fiorsen's elbow, he nodded and went.

Fiorsen, who had leaped out of bed, put his hand to his head. The cursed
fellow! Cursed be every one of them--the father and the girl, Rosek and
all the other sharks! He went out on to the landing. The house was
quite still below. Rosek had gone--good riddance! He called, "Gyp!" No
answer. He went into her room. Its superlative daintiness struck his
fancy. A scent of cyclamen! He looked out into the garden. There was
the baby at the end, and that fat woman. No Gyp! Never in when she was
wanted. Wagge! He shivered; and, going back into his bedroom, took a
brandy-bottle from a locked cupboard and drank some. It steadied him; he
locked up the cupboard again, and dressed.

Going out to the music-room, he stopped under the trees to make passes
with his fingers at the baby. Sometimes he felt that it was an adorable
little creature, with its big, dark eyes so like Gyp's. Sometimes it
excited his disgust--a discoloured brat. This morning, while looking at
it, he thought suddenly of the other that was coming--and grimaced.
Catching Betty's stare of horrified amazement at the face he was making
at her darling, he burst into a laugh and turned away into the
music-room.

While he was keying up his violin, Gyp's conduct in never having come
there for so long struck him as bitterly unjust. The girl--who cared
about the wretched girl? As if she made any real difference! It was all
so much deeper than that. Gyp had never loved him, never given him what
he wanted, never quenched his thirst of her! That was the heart of it.
No other woman he had ever had to do with had been like that--kept his
thirst unquenched. No; he had always tired of them before they tired of
him. She gave him nothing really--nothing! Had she no heart or did she
give it elsewhere? What was that Paul had said about her music-lessons?
And suddenly it struck him that he knew nothing, absolutely nothing, of
where she went or what she did. She never told him anything.
Music-lessons? Every day, nearly, she went out, was away for hours. The
thought that she might go to the arms of another man made him put down
his violin with a feeling of actual sickness. Why not? That deep and
fearful whipping of the sexual instinct which makes the ache of jealousy
so truly terrible was at its full in such a nature as Fiorsen's. He drew
a long breath and shuddered. The remembrance of her fastidious pride,
he