She had not long to wait before he tapped on the drawing-room window.  She got up from the tea-table to let him in.  Why do faces gazing in through glass from darkness always look hungry—­ searching, appealing for what you have and they have not?  And while she was undoing the latch she thought:  ’What am I going to say?  I feel nothing!’ The ardour of his gaze, voice, hands seemed to her so false as to be almost comic; even more comically false his look of disappointment when she said: 

“Please take care; I’m still brittle!” Then she sat down again and asked: 

“Will you have some tea?”

“Tea!  I have you back, and you ask me if I will have tea Gyp!  Do you know what I have felt like all this time?  No; you don’t know.  You know nothing of me—­do you?”

A smile of sheer irony formed on her lips—­without her knowing it was there.  She said: 

“Have you had a good time at Count Rosek’s?” And, without her will, against her will, the words slipped out:  “I’m afraid you’ve missed the music-room!”

His stare wavered; he began to walk up and down.

“Missed!  Missed everything!  I have been very miserable, Gyp.  You’ve no idea how miserable.  Yes, miserable, miserable, miserable!” With each repetition of that word, his voice grew gayer.  And kneeling down in front of her, he stretched his long arms round her till they met behind her waist:  “Ah, my Gyp!  I shall be a different being, now.”

And Gyp went on smiling.  Between that, and stabbing these false raptures to the heart, there seemed to be nothing she could do.  The moment his hands relaxed, she got up and said: 

“You know there’s a baby in the house?”

He laughed.

“Ah, the baby!  I’d forgotten.  Let’s go up and see it.”

Gyp answered: 

“You go.”

She could feel him thinking:  ‘Perhaps it will make her nice to me!’ He turned suddenly and went.

She stood with her eyes shut, seeing the divan in the music-room and the girl’s arm shivering.  Then, going to the piano, she began with all her might to play a Chopin polonaise.

That evening they dined out, and went to “The Tales of Hoffmann.”  By such devices it was possible to put off a little longer what she was going to do.  During the drive home in the dark cab, she shrank away into her corner, pretending that his arm would hurt her dress; her exasperated nerves were already overstrung.  Twice she was on the very point of crying out:  “I am not Daphne Wing!” But each time pride strangled the words in her throat.  And yet they would have to come.  What other reason could she find to keep him from her room?

But when in her mirror she saw him standing behind her—­he had crept into the bedroom like a cat—­fierceness came into her.  She could see the blood rush up in her own white face, and, turning round she said: 

“No, Gustav, go out to the music-room if you want a companion.”