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Conscious of her father's face, Gyp murmured: "It's a lovely name. Won't you have another? These are apricot." "They're perfect. You know, my first dress is going to be all orange-blossom; Mr. Fiorsen suggested that. But I expect he told you. Perhaps you suggested it really; did you?" Gyp shook her head.
A perfect figure, though rather short; a dovelike face, whose exquisitely shaped, just-opened lips seemed to be demanding sugar-plums. She could not be more than nineteen. Who was she? A voice said almost in her ear: "How do you do, Mrs. Fiorsen? I am fortunate to see you again at last." She was obliged to turn.
That evening, at dinner, Winton said calmly: "Well, I've been to see Fiorsen, and warned him off. Found him at that fellow Rosek's." Gyp received the news with a vague sensation of alarm. "And I met that girl, the dancer, coming out of the house as I was going in made it plain I'd seen her, so I don't think he'll trouble you." An irresistible impulse made her ask: "How was she looking, Dad?"
Not really. It all served to swell the triumphant intoxication of days when she was ever more and more in love with living, more and more conscious that the world appreciated and admired her, that she had power to do what others couldn't. Was not Fiorsen, with his great talent, and his dubious reputation, proof of that? And he excited her.
She stayed quite late in bed. It was delicious, with window and door wide open and the puppies running in and out, to lie and doze off, or listen to the pigeons' cooing, and the distant sounds of traffic, and feel in command once more of herself, body and soul. Now that she had told Fiorsen, she had no longer any desire to keep her condition secret.
After that Sunday call, Gyp sat in the window at Bury Street close to a bowl of heliotrope on the window-sill. She was thinking over a passage of their conversation. "Mrs. Fiorsen, tell me about yourself." "Why? What do you want to know?" "Your marriage?" "I made a fearful mistake against my father's wish. I haven't seen my husband for months; I shall never see him again if I can help it.
Gyp thought of her baby, and of that which would have been its half-brother; and now that she was so near having to go back to Fiorsen, she knew that she had not been wise to come here. To have been in contact with the girl, to have touched, as it were, that trouble, had made the thought of life with him less tolerable even than it was before.
They would both lie Rosek, because he obviously saw the mistaken line of his first attack; Fiorsen, because his temperament did not permit him to suffer by speaking the truth. Having set herself to endure, she found she must live in the moment, never think of the future, never think much of anything. Fortunately, nothing so conduces to vacuity as a baby. She gave herself up to it with desperation.
A voice behind Gyp said: "My God! What's this? An angel?" Fiorsen was standing hall-way in the darkened room staring out into the garden, where the girl had halted, transfixed before the window, her eyes as round as saucers, her mouth open, her limbs rigid with interest and affright. Suddenly she turned and, gathering her garment, fled, her limbs gleaming in the moonlight.
And, getting into bed, she turned out the light. It seemed queer and lonely; there was no fire. And then, without more ado, she slept. She had a dream of being between Fiorsen and her father in a railway-carriage out at sea, with the water rising higher and higher, swishing and sighing.
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