t my little daughter and I live with my father again." What "came
over" her--as they say--to be so frank, she could not have told.

He said simply:

"Ah! I've often thought it queer I've never seen you since. What a run
that was!"

"Perfect! Was that your mother on the platform?"

"Yes--and my sister Edith. Extraordinary dead-alive place, Widrington; I
expect Mildenham isn't much better?"

"It's very quiet, but I like it."

"By the way, I don't know your name now?"

"Fiorsen."

"Oh, yes! The violinist. Life's a bit of a gamble, isn't it?"

Gyp did not answer that odd remark, did not quite know what to make of
this audacious young man, whose hazel eyes and lazy smile were queerly
lovable, but whose face in repose had such a broad gravity. He took from
his pocket a little red book.

"Do you know these? I always take them travelling. Finest things ever
written, aren't they?"

The book--Shakespeare's Sonnets--was open at that which begins:

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove--"

Gyp read on as far as the lines:

"Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out even to the edge of doom--"

and looked out of the window. The train was passing through a country of
fields and dykes, where the sun, far down in the west, shone almost level
over wide, whitish-green space, and the spotted cattle browsed or stood
by the ditches, lazily flicking their tufted tails. A shaft of sunlight
flowed into the carriage, filled with dust motes; and, handing the little
book back through that streak of radiance, she said softly:

"Yes; that's wonderful. Do you read much poetry?"

"More law, I'm afraid. But it is about the finest thing in the world,
isn't it?"

"No; I think music."

"Are you a musician?"

"Only a little."

"You look as if you might be."

"What? A little?"

"No; I should think you had it badly."

"Thank you. And you haven't it at all?"

"I like opera."

"The hybrid form--and the lowest!"

"That's why it suits me. Don't you like it, though?"

"Yes; that's why I'm going up to London."

"Really? Are you a subscriber?"

"This season."

"So am I. Jolly--I shall see you."

Gyp smiled. It was so lon