tand
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 round 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