ly on the Neroberg, chafing at
regulations which reduced her to specified tracks in that majestic
wood where the beeches glowed. Once or even twice a day she went to the
concerts in the Kurhaus, either with her father or alone.

The first time she heard Fiorsen play she was alone. Unlike most
violinists, he was tall and thin, with great pliancy of body and swift
sway of movement. His face was pale, and went strangely with hair and
moustache of a sort of dirt-gold colour, and his thin cheeks with very
broad high cheek-bones had little narrow scraps of whisker. Those
little whiskers seemed to Gyp awful--indeed, he seemed rather awful
altogether--but his playing stirred and swept her in the most uncanny
way. He had evidently remarkable technique; and the emotion, the intense
wayward feeling of his playing was chiselled by that technique, as if
a flame were being frozen in its swaying. When he stopped, she did not
join in the tornado of applause, but sat motionless, looking up at him.
Quite unconstrained by all those people, he passed the back of his hand
across his hot brow, shoving up a wave or two of that queer-coloured
hair; then, with a rather disagreeable smile, he made a short supple bow
or two. And she thought, "What strange eyes he has--like a great cat's!"
Surely they were green; fierce, yet shy, almost furtive--mesmeric!
Certainly the strangest man she had ever seen, and the most frightening.
He seemed looking straight at her; and, dropping her gaze, she clapped.
When she looked again, his face had lost that smile for a kind of
wistfulness. He made another of those little supple bows straight at
her--it seemed to Gyp--and jerked his violin up to his shoulder.
"He's going to play to me," she thought absurdly. He played without
accompaniment a little tune that seemed to twitch the heart. When he
finished, this time she did not look up, but was conscious that he gave
one impatient bow and walked off.

That evening at dinner she said to Winton:

"I heard a violinist to-day, Dad, the most wonderful playing--Gustav
Fiorsen. Is that Swedish, do you think--or what?"

Winton answered:

"Very likely. What sort of a bounder was he to look at? I used to know a
Swede in the Turkish army--nice fellow, too."

"Tall and thin and white-faced, with bumpy cheek-bones, and hollows
under them, and queer green eyes. Oh, and little goldy side-whiskers."

"By Jove! It sounds the limit."

Gyp murmured, with a smile:

"Yes; I t