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.  If Gustav had given her away, one would never know it from this velvet-masked creature, with his suave watchfulness and ready composure, who talked away so smoothly.  What was it that she so disliked in him?  Gyp had acute instincts, the natural intelligence deep in certain natures not over intellectual, but whose “feelers” are too delicate to be deceived.  And, for something to say, she asked: 

“Who is the girl you were talking to, Count Rosek?  Her face is so lovely.”

He smiled, exactly the smile she had so disliked at Wiesbaden; following his glance, she saw her husband talking to the girl, whose lips at that moment seemed more than ever to ask for sugar-plums.

“A young dancer, Daphne Wing—­she will make a name.  A dove flying!  So you admire her, Madame Gyp?”

Gyp said, smiling: 

“She’s very pretty—­I can imagine her dancing beautifully.”

“Will you come one day and see her?  She has still to make her debut.”

Gyp answered: 

“Thank you.  I don’t know.  I love dancing, of course.”

“Good!  I will arrange it.”

And Gyp thought:  “No, no!  I don’t want to have anything to do with you!  Why do I not speak the truth?  Why didn’t I say I hate dancing?”

Just then a bell sounded; people began hurrying away.  The girl came up to Rosek.

“Miss Daphne Wing—­Mrs. Fiorsen.”

Gyp put out her hand with a smile—­this girl was certainly a picture.  Miss Daphne Wing smiled, too, and said, with the intonation of those who have been carefully corrected of an accent: 

“Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, how beautifully your husband plays—­doesn’t he?”

It was not merely the careful speech but something lacking when the perfect mouth moved—­spirit, sensibility, who could say?  And Gyp felt sorry, as at blight on a perfect flower.  With a friendly nod, she turned away to Fiorsen, who was waiting to go up on to the platform.  Was it at her or at the girl he had been looking?  She smiled at him and slid away.  In the corridor, Rosek, in attendance, said: 

“Why not this evening?  Come with Gustav to my rooms.  She shall dance to us, and we will all have supper.  She admires you, Madame Gyp.  She will love to dance for you.”

Gyp longed for the simple brutality to say:  “I don’t want to come.  I don’t like you!” But all she could manage was: 

“Thank you.  I—­I will ask Gustav.”

Once in her seat again, she rubbed the cheek that his breath had touched.  A girl was singing now—­one of those faces that Gyp always admired, reddish-gold hair, blue eyes—­the very antithesis of herself—­and the song was “The Bens of Jura,” that strange outpouring from a heart broken by love: 

     “And my heart reft of its own sun—­”