and sea air needful to tan little Gyp, a
fat, tumbling soul, as her mother had been at the same age, incurably
fond and fearless of dogs or any kind of beast, and speaking words
already that required a glossary.

At night, Gyp, looking from her bedroom through the flat branches of the
pine, would get a feeling of being the only creature in the world. The
crinkled, silvery sea, that lonely pine-tree, the cold moon, the sky dark
corn-flower blue, the hiss and sucking rustle of the surf over the beach
pebbles, even the salt, chill air, seemed lonely. By day, too--in the
hazy heat when the clouds merged, scarce drifting, into the blue, and the
coarse sea-grass tufts hardly quivered, and sea-birds passed close above
the water with chuckle and cry--it all often seemed part of a dream. She
bathed, and grew as tanned as her little daughter, a regular Gypsy, in
her broad hat and linen frocks; and yet she hardly seemed to be living
down here at all, for she was never free of the memory of that last
meeting with Summerhay. Why had he spoken and put an end to their quiet
friendship, and left her to such heart-searchings all by herself? But
she did not want his words unsaid. Only, how to know whether to recoil
and fly, or to pass beyond the dread of letting herself go, of plunging
deep into the unknown depths of love--of that passion, whose nature for
the first time she had tremulously felt, watching "Pagliacci"--and had
ever since been feeling and trembling at! Must it really be neck or
nothing? Did she care enough to break through all barriers, fling
herself into midstream? When they could see each other every day, it was
so easy to live for the next meeting--not think of what was coming after.
But now, with all else cut away, there was only the future to think
about--hers and his. But need she trouble about his? Would he not just
love her as long as he liked?

Then she thought of her father--still faithful to a memory--and felt
ashamed. Some men loved on--yes--even beyond death! But, sometimes, she
would think: 'Am I a candle-flame again? Is he just going to burn
himself? What real good can I be to him--I, without freedom, and with my
baby, who will grow up?' Yet all these thoughts were, in a way, unreal.
The struggle was in herself, so deep that she could hardly understand it;
as might be an effort to subdue the instinctive dread of a precipice.
And she would feel a kind of resentment against all the happy life r