red. How he had loved her, did love her! She would always
be what she was and had been to him. And the sage's mouth seemed to
twist before him with the words: "Quite so, my dear! But the heart's
very funny--very--capacious!" A tiny sound made him turn.

Little Gyp was standing in the doorway.

"Hallo!" he said.

"Hallo, Baryn!" She came flying to him, and he caught her up so that she
stood on his knees with the sunlight shining on her fluffed out hair.

"Well, Gipsy! Who's getting a tall girl?"

"I'm goin' to ride."

"Ho, ho!"

"Baryn, let's do Humpty-Dumpty!"

"All right; come on!" He rose and carried her upstairs.

Gyp was still doing one of those hundred things which occupy women for a
quarter of an hour after they are "quite ready," and at little Gyp's
shout of, "Humpty!" she suspended her needle to watch the sacred rite.

Summerhay had seated himself on the foot-rail of the bed, rounding his
arms, sinking his neck, blowing out his cheeks to simulate an egg; then,
with an unexpectedness that even little Gyp could always see through, he
rolled backward on to the bed.

And she, simulating "all the king's horses," tried in vain to put him up
again. This immemorial game, watched by Gyp a hundred times, had to-day
a special preciousness. If he could be so ridiculously young, what
became of her doubts? Looking at his face pulled this way and that,
lazily imperturbable under the pommelings of those small fingers, she
thought: 'And that girl dared to say he was WASTING HIMSELF!' For in the
night conviction had come to her that those words were written by the
tall girl with the white skin, the girl of the theatre--the Diana of his
last night's dinner. Humpty-Dumpty was up on the bed-rail again for the
finale; all the king's horses were clasped to him, making the egg more
round, and over they both went with shrieks and gurgles. What a boy he
was! She would not--no, she would not brood and spoil her day with him.

But that afternoon, at the end of a long gallop on the downs, she turned
her head away and said suddenly:

"Is she a huntress?"

"Who?"

"Your cousin--Diana."

In his laziest voice, he answered:

"I suppose you mean--does she hunt me?"

She knew that tone, that expression on his face, knew he was angry; but
could not stop herself.

"I did."

"So you're going to become jealous, Gyp?"

It was one of those cold, naked sayings that should never be spoken
between lovers--one of thos