He was speaking very fast, very low, with an agitated earnestness that surely could not be put on.  But suddenly muttering:  “These people!” he made her another of his little bows and abruptly slipped away.  The baroness was bringing up another man.  The chief thought left by that meeting was:  “Is that how he begins to everyone?” She could not quite believe it.  The stammering earnestness of his voice, those humbly adoring looks!  Then she remembered the smile on the lips of the little Pole, and thought:  “But he must know I’m not silly enough just to be taken in by vulgar flattery!”

Too sensitive to confide in anyone, she had no chance to ventilate the curious sensations of attraction and repulsion that began fermenting in her, feelings defying analysis, mingling and quarrelling deep down in her heart.  It was certainly not love, not even the beginning of that; but it was the kind of dangerous interest children feel in things mysterious, out of reach, yet within reach, if only they dared!  And the tug of music was there, and the tug of those words of the baroness about salvation—­the thought of achieving the impossible, reserved only for the woman of supreme charm, for the true victress.  But all these thoughts and feelings were as yet in embryo.  She might never see him again!  And she certainly did not know whether she even wanted to.

IV

Gyp was in the habit of walking with Winton to the Kochbrunnen, where, with other patient-folk, he was required to drink slowly for twenty minutes every morning.  While he was imbibing she would sit in a remote corner of the garden, and read a novel in the Reclam edition, as a daily German lesson.

She was sitting there, the morning after the “at-home” at the Baroness von Maisen’s, reading Turgenev’s “Torrents of Spring,” when she saw Count Rosek sauntering down the path with a glass of the waters in his hand.  Instant memory of the smile with which he had introduced Fiorsen made her take cover beneath her sunshade.  She could see his patent-leathered feet, and well-turned, peg-top-trousered legs go by with the gait of a man whose waist is corseted.  The certainty that he wore those prerogatives of womanhood increased her dislike.  How dare men be so effeminate?  Yet someone had told her that he was a good rider, a good fencer, and very strong.  She drew a breath of relief when he was past, and, for fear he might turn and come back, closed her little book and slipped away.  But her figure and her springing step were more unmistakable than she knew.

Next morning, on the same bench, she was reading breathlessly the scene between Gemma and Sanin at the window, when she heard Fiorsen’s voice, behind her, say: 

“Miss Winton!”

He, too, held a glass of the waters in one hand, and his hat in the other.

“I have just made your father’s acquaintance.  May I sit down a minute?”