se shining black gloves, she went upstairs
and washed her face and hands.

For several days, Fiorsen wavered; but his collapse had come just in
time, and with every hour the danger lessened. At the end of a fortnight
of a perfectly white life, there remained nothing to do in the words of
the doctor but "to avoid all recurrence of the predisposing causes, and
shove in sea air!" Gyp had locked up all brandy--and violins; she could
control him so long as he was tamed by his own weakness. But she passed
some very bitter hours before she sent for her baby, Betty, and the dogs,
and definitely took up life in her little house again. His debts had
been paid, including the thousand pounds to Rosek, and the losses of
Daphne Wing. The girl had gone down to that cottage where no one had
ever heard of her, to pass her time in lonely grief and terror, with the
aid of a black dress and a gold band on her third finger.

August and the first half of September were spent near Bude. Fiorsen's
passion for the sea, a passion Gyp could share, kept him singularly
moderate and free from restiveness. He had been thoroughly frightened,
and such terror is not easily forgotten. They stayed in a farmhouse,
where he was at his best with the simple folk, and his best could be
charming. He was always trying to get his "mermaid," as he took to
calling Gyp, away from the baby, getting her away to himself, along the
grassy cliffs and among the rocks and yellow sands of that free coast.
His delight was to find every day some new nook where they could bathe,
and dry themselves by sitting in the sun. And very like a mermaid she
was, on a seaweedy rock, with her feet close together in a little pool,
her fingers combing her drowned hair, and the sun silvering her wet body.
If she had loved him, it would have been perfect. But though, close to
nature like this--there are men to whom towns are poison--he was so much
more easy to bear, even to like, her heart never opened to him, never
fluttered at his voice, or beat more quickly under his kisses. One
cannot regulate these things. The warmth in her eyes when they looked at
her baby, and the coolness when they looked at him, was such that not
even a man, and he an egoist, could help seeing; and secretly he began to
hate that tiny rival, and she began to notice that he did.

As soon as the weather broke, he grew restless, craving his violin, and
they went back to town, in robust health--all three. Dur