s, she said, with a shiver:

"I didn't try to make you, did I? I never tried."

"No; never."

"It's wrong."

"Who cares? No one could care who loves as I do. Oh, Gyp, can't you love
me? I know I'm nothing much." How quaint and boyish! "But it's eleven
weeks to-day since we met in the train. I don't think I've had one
minute's let-up since."

"Have you tried?"

"Why should I, when I love you?"

Gyp sighed; relief, delight, pain--she did not know.

"Then what is to be done? Look over there--that bit of blue in the grass
is my baby daughter. There's her--and my father--and--"

"And what?"

"I'm afraid--afraid of love, Bryan!"

At that first use of his name, Summerhay turned pale and seized her
hand.

"Afraid--how--afraid?"

Gyp said very low:

"I might love too much. Don't say any more now. No; don't! Let's go in
and have lunch." And she got up.

He stayed till tea-time, and not a word more of love did he speak. But
when he was gone, she sat under the pine-tree with little Gyp on her
lap. Love! If her mother had checked love, she herself would never have
been born. The midges were biting before she went in. After watching
Betty give little Gyp her bath, she crossed the passage to her bedroom
and leaned out of the window. Could it have been to-day she had lain on
the ground with tears of despair running down on to her hands? Away to
the left of the pine-tree, the moon had floated up, soft, barely visible
in the paling sky. A new world, an enchanted garden! And between her and
it--what was there?

That evening she sat with a book on her lap, not reading; and in her
went on the strange revolution which comes in the souls of all women who
are not half-men when first they love--the sinking of 'I' into 'Thou,'
the passionate, spiritual subjection, the intense, unconscious giving-up
of will, in preparation for completer union.

She slept without dreaming, awoke heavy and oppressed. Too languid to
bathe, she sat listless on the beach with little Gyp all the morning.
Had she energy or spirit to meet him in the afternoon by the rock
archway, as she had promised? For the first time since she was a small
and naughty child, she avoided the eyes of Betty. One could not be
afraid of that stout, devoted soul, but one could feel that she knew too
much. When the time came, after early tea, she started out; for if she
did not go, he would come, and she did not want the servants to see him
two days running.

This las