He bowed, folding his arms, as if to make her feel safe from him.  And when, regardless of the rain, she began to move on, he walked beside her, a yard or so away, humbly, as though he had never poured out those words or hurt her lips with the violence of his kiss.

Back in her room, taking off her wet dress, Gyp tried to remember what he had said and what she had answered.  She had not promised anything.  But she had given him her address, both in London and the country.  Unless she resolutely thought of other things, she still felt the restless touch of his hands, the grip of his arms, and saw his eyes as they were when he was kissing her; and once more she felt frightened and excited.

He was playing at the concert that evening—­her last concert.  And surely he had never played like that—­with a despairing beauty, a sort of frenzied rapture.  Listening, there came to her a feeling—­ a feeling of fatality—­that, whether she would or no, she could not free herself from him.

V

Once back in England, Gyp lost that feeling, or very nearly.  Her scepticism told her that Fiorsen would soon see someone else who seemed all he had said she was!  How ridiculous to suppose that he would stop his follies for her, that she had any real power over him!  But, deep down, she did not quite believe this.  It would have wounded her belief in herself too much—­a belief so subtle and intimate that she was not conscious of it; belief in that something about her which had inspired the baroness to use the word “fatality.”

Winton, who breathed again, hurried her off to Mildenham.  He had bought her a new horse.  They were in time for the last of the cubbing.  And, for a week at least, the passion for riding and the sight of hounds carried all before it.  Then, just as the real business of the season was beginning, she began to feel dull and restless.  Mildenham was dark; the autumn winds made dreary noises.  Her little brown spaniel, very old, who seemed only to have held on to life just for her return, died.  She accused herself terribly for having left it so long when it was failing.  Thinking of all the days Lass had been watching for her to come home—­as Betty, with that love of woeful recital so dear to simple hearts, took good care to make plain—­she felt as if she had been cruel.  For events such as these, Gyp was both too tender-hearted and too hard on herself.  She was quite ill for several days.  The moment she was better, Winton, in dismay, whisked her back to Aunt Rosamund, in town.  He would lose her company, but if it did her good, took her out of herself, he would be content.  Running up for the week-end, three days later, he was relieved to find her decidedly perked-up, and left her again with the easier heart.