went off into an ecstasy of smothered laughter; then his
face grew grave, and slowly puckered into a sort of comic disgust. Gyp
too had seen the humours of her baby, of its queer little reddish pudge
of a face, of its twenty-seven black hairs, and the dribble at its
almost invisible mouth; but she had also seen it as a miracle; she
had felt it, and there surged up from her all the old revolt and more
against his lack of consideration. It was not a funny one--her baby! It
was not ugly! Or, if it were, she was not fit to be told of it. Her
arm tightened round the warm bundled thing against her. Fiorsen put his
finger out and touched its cheek.

"It IS real--so it is. Mademoiselle Fiorsen. Tk, tk!"

The baby stirred. And Gyp thought: 'If I loved I wouldn't even mind his
laughing at my baby. It would be different.'

"Don't wake her!" she whispered. She felt his eyes on her, knew that
his interest in the baby had ceased as suddenly as it came, that he was
thinking, "How long before I have you in my arms again?" He touched her
hair. And, suddenly, she had a fainting, sinking sensation that she had
never yet known. When she opened her eyes again, the economic agent was
holding something beneath her nose and making sounds that seemed to be
the words: "Well, I am a d--d fool!" repeatedly expressed. Fiorsen was
gone.

Seeing Gyp's eyes once more open, the nurse withdrew the ammonia,
replaced the baby, and saying: "Now go to sleep!" withdrew behind
the screen. Like all robust personalities, she visited on others her
vexations with herself. But Gyp did not go to sleep; she gazed now
at her sleeping baby, now at the pattern of the wall-paper, trying
mechanically to find the bird caught at intervals amongst its
brown-and-green foliage--one bird in each alternate square of the
pattern, so that there was always a bird in the centre of four other
birds. And the bird was of green and yellow with a red beak.

On being turned out of the nursery with the assurance that it was "all
right--only a little faint," Fiorsen went down-stairs disconsolate.
The atmosphere of this dark house where he was a stranger, an unwelcome
stranger, was insupportable. He wanted nothing in it but Gyp, and Gyp
had fainted at his touch. No wonder he felt miserable. He opened a
door. What room was this? A piano! The drawing-room. Ugh! No fire--what
misery! He recoiled to the doorway and stood listening. Not a sound.
Grey light in the cheerless room; almost d