For lunch she drank some beef tea, keeping up the fiction of her indisposition.  After that, she sat down at her bureau to write.  Something must be decided!  There she sat, her forehead on her hand, and nothing came—­not one word—­not even the way to address him; just the date, and that was all.  At a ring of the bell she started up.  She could not see anybody!  But the maid only brought a note from Aunt Rosamund, and the dogs, who fell frantically on their mistress and instantly began to fight for her possession.  She went on her knees to separate them, and enjoin peace and good-will, and their little avid tongues furiously licked her cheeks.  Under the eager touch of those wet tongues the band round her brain and heart gave way; she was overwhelmed with longing for her baby.  Nearly a day since she had seen her—­was it possible?  Nearly a day without sight of those solemn eyes and crinkled toes and fingers!  And followed by the dogs, she went upstairs.

The house was invisible from the music-room; and, spurred on by thought that, until Fiorsen knew she was back, those two might be there in each other’s arms any moment of the day or night, Gyp wrote that evening: 

“Dear Gustav,—­We are back.—­Gyp.”

What else in the world could she say?  He would not get it till he woke about eleven.  With the instinct to take all the respite she could, and knowing no more than before how she would receive his return, she went out in the forenoon and wandered about all day shopping and trying not to think.  Returning at tea-time, she went straight up to her baby, and there heard from Betty that he had come, and gone out with his violin to the music-room.

Bent over the child, Gyp needed all her self-control—­but her self-control was becoming great.  Soon, the girl would come fluttering down that dark, narrow lane; perhaps at this very minute her fingers were tapping at the door, and he was opening it to murmur, “No; she’s back!” Ah, then the girl would shrink!  The rapid whispering—­some other meeting-place!  Lips to lips, and that look on the girl’s face; till she hurried away from the shut door, in the darkness, disappointed!  And he, on that silver-and-gold divan, gnawing his moustache, his eyes—­catlike—–­staring at the fire!  And then, perhaps, from his violin would come one of those swaying bursts of sound, with tears in them, and the wind in them, that had of old bewitched her!  She said: 

“Open the window just a little, Betty dear—­it’s hot.”

There it was, rising, falling!  Music!  Why did it so move one even when, as now, it was the voice of insult!  And suddenly she thought:  “He will expect me to go out there again and play for him.  But I will not, never!”

She put her baby down, went into her bedroom, and changed hastily into a teagown for the evening, ready to go downstairs.  A little shepherdess in china on the mantel-shelf attracted her attention, and she took it in her hand.  She had bought it three and more years ago, when she first came to London, at the beginning of that time of girl-gaiety when all life seemed a long cotillion, and she its leader.  Its cool daintiness made it seem the symbol of another world, a world without depths or shadows, a world that did not feel—­a happy world!