sy--when there was nothing to be
uneasy about--by letting him come too often to Bury Street? It was so
pleasant, too, out there, talking calmly of many things, while in front
of them the small ragged children fished and put the fishes into clear
glass bottles, to eat, or watch on rainy days, as is the custom of man
with the minor works of God.

So, in nature, when the seasons are about to change, the days pass,
tranquil, waiting for the wind that brings in the new. And was it not
natural to sit under the trees, by the flowers and the water, the pigeons
and the ducks, that wonderful July? For all was peaceful in Gyp's mind,
except, now and then, when a sort of remorse possessed her, a sort of
terror, and a sort of troubling sweetness.

V

Summerhay did not wear his heart on his sleeve, and when, on the
closing-day of term, he left his chambers to walk to that last meeting,
his face was much as usual under his grey top hat. But, in truth, he had
come to a pretty pass. He had his own code of what was befitting to a
gentleman. It was perhaps a trifle "old Georgian," but it included doing
nothing to distress a woman. All these weeks he had kept himself in
hand; but to do so had cost him more than he liked to reflect on. The
only witness of his struggles was his old Scotch terrier, whose dreams he
had disturbed night after night, tramping up and down the long
back-to-front sitting-room of his little house. She knew--must
know--what he was feeling. If she wanted his love, she had but to raise
her finger; and she had not raised it. When he touched her, when her
dress disengaged its perfume or his eyes traced the slow, soft movement
of her breathing, his head would go round, and to keep calm and friendly
had been torture.

While he could see her almost every day, this control had been just
possible; but now that he was about to lose her--for weeks--his heart
felt sick within him. He had been hard put to it before the world. A
man passionately in love craves solitude, in which to alternate between
fierce exercise and that trance-like stillness when a lover simply aches
or is busy conjuring her face up out of darkness or the sunlight. He had
managed to do his work, had been grateful for having it to do; but to his
friends he had not given attention enough to prevent them saying: "What's
up with old Bryan?" Always rather elusive in his movements, he was now
too elusive altogether for those who had been accu