ound
her these summer days--the sea-birds, the sunlight, and the waves; the
white sails far out; the calm sun-steeped pine-trees; her baby, tumbling
and smiling and softly twittering; and Betty and the other servants--all
this life that seemed so simple and untortured.

To the one post each day she looked forward terribly. And yet his
letters, which began like hers: "My dear friend," might have been read by
anyone--almost. She spent a long time over her answers. She was not
sleeping well; and, lying awake, she could see his face very distinct
before her closed eyes--its teasing, lazy smile, its sudden intent
gravity. Once she had a dream of him, rushing past her down into the
sea. She called, but, without turning his head, he swam out further,
further, till she lost sight of him, and woke up suddenly with a pain in
her heart. "If you can't love me, I've got to break away!" His face,
his flung-back head reminded her too sharply of those words. Now that he
was away from her, would he not feel that it was best to break, and
forget her? Up there, he would meet girls untouched by life--not like
herself. He had everything before him; could he possibly go on wanting
one who had nothing before her? Some blue-eyed girl with auburn
hair--that type so superior to her own--would sweep, perhaps had already
swept him, away from her! What then? No worse than it used to be? Ah,
so much worse that she dared not think of it!

Then, for five days, no letter came. And, with each blank morning, the
ache in her grew--a sharp, definite ache of longing and jealousy, utterly
unlike the mere feeling of outraged pride when she had surprised Fiorsen
and Daphne Wing in the music-room--a hundred years ago, it seemed. When
on the fifth day the postman left nothing but a bill for little Gyp's
shoes, and a note from Aunt Rosamund at Harrogate, where she had gone
with Winton for the annual cure, Gyp's heart sank to the depths. Was
this the end? And, with a blind, numb feeling, she wandered out into the
wood, where the fall of the pine-needles, season after season, had made
of the ground one soft, dark, dust-coloured bed, on which the sunlight
traced the pattern of the pine boughs, and ants rummaged about their
great heaped dwellings.

Gyp went along till she could see no outer world for the grey-brown
tree-stems streaked with gum-resin; and, throwing herself down on her
face, dug her elbows deep into the pine dust. Tears, so rare with