Over her departure, Fiorsen behaved like a tired child that will not go to bed.  He could not bear to be away from her, and so forth; but when she had gone, he spent a furious bohemian evening.  At about five, he woke with “an awful cold feeling in my heart,” as he wrote to Gyp next day—­“an awful feeling, my Gyp; I walked up and down for hours” (in reality, half an hour at most).  “How shall I bear to be away from you at this time?  I feel lost.”  Next day, he found himself in Paris with Rosek.  “I could not stand,” he wrote, “the sight of the streets, of the garden, of our room.  When I come back I shall stay with Rosek.  Nearer to the day I will come; I must come to you.”  But Gyp, when she read the letter, said to Winton:  “Dad, when it comes, don’t send for him.  I don’t want him here.”

With those letters of his, she buried the last remnants of her feeling that somewhere in him there must be something as fine and beautiful as the sounds he made with his violin.  And yet she felt those letters genuine in a way, pathetic, and with real feeling of a sort.

From the moment she reached Mildenham, she began to lose that hopelessness about herself; and, for the first time, had the sensation of wanting to live in the new life within her.  She first felt it, going into her old nursery, where everything was the same as it had been when she first saw it, a child of eight; there was her old red doll’s house, the whole side of which opened to display the various floors; the worn Venetian blinds, the rattle of whose fall had sounded in her ears so many hundred times; the high fender, near which she had lain so often on the floor, her chin on her hands, reading Grimm, or “Alice in Wonderland,” or histories of England.  Here, too, perhaps this new child would live amongst the old familiars.  And the whim seized her to face her hour in her old nursery, not in the room where she had slept as a girl.  She would not like the daintiness of that room deflowered.  Let it stay the room of her girlhood.  But in the nursery—­there was safety, comfort!  And when she had been at Mildenham a week, she made Betty change her over.

No one in that house was half so calm to look at in those days as Gyp.  Betty was not guiltless of sitting on the stairs and crying at odd moments.  Mrs. Markey had never made such bad soups.  Markey so far forgot himself as frequently to talk.  Winton lamed a horse trying an impossible jump that he might get home the quicker, and, once back, was like an unquiet spirit.  If Gyp were in the room, he would make the pretence of wanting to warm his feet or hand, just to stroke her shoulder as he went back to his chair.  His voice, so measured and dry, had a ring in it, that too plainly disclosed the anxiety of his heart.  Gyp, always sensitive to atmosphere, felt cradled in all the love about her.  Wonderful that they should all care so much!  What had she done for anyone, that people should be