He recoiled against the foot of the bed and stared at her haggardly, and Gyp, turning back to her mirror, went on quietly taking the pins out of her hair.  For fully a minute she could see him leaning there, moving his head and hands as though in pain.  Then, to her surprise, he went.  And a vague feeling of compunction mingled with her sense of deliverance.  She lay awake a long time, watching the fire-glow brighten and darken on the ceiling, tunes from “The Tales of Hoffmann” running in her head; thoughts and fancies crisscrossing in her excited brain.  Falling asleep at last, she dreamed she was feeding doves out of her hand, and one of them was Daphne Wing.  She woke with a start.  The fire still burned, and by its light she saw him crouching at the foot of the bed, just as he had on their wedding-night—­the same hungry yearning in his face, and an arm outstretched.  Before she could speak, he began: 

“Oh, Gyp, you don’t understand!  All that is nothing—­it is only you I want—­always.  I am a fool who cannot control himself.  Think!  It’s a long time since you went away from me.”

Gyp said, in a hard voice: 

“I didn’t want to have a child.”

He said quickly: 

“No; but now you have it you are glad.  Don’t be unmerciful, my Gyp!  It is like you to be merciful.  That girl—­it is all over—­I swear—­I promise.”

His hand touched her foot through the soft eiderdown.  Gyp thought:  ’Why does he come and whine to me like this?  He has no dignity—­none!’ And she said: 

“How can you promise?  You have made the girl love you.  I saw her face.”

He drew his hand back.

“You saw her?”

“Yes.”

He was silent, staring at her.  Presently he began again: 

“She is a little fool.  I do not care for the whole of her as much as I care for your one finger.  What does it matter what one does in that way if one does not care?  The soul, not the body, is faithful.  A man satisfies appetite—­it is nothing.”

Gyp said: 

“Perhaps not; but it is something when it makes others miserable.”

“Has it made you miserable, my Gyp?”

His voice had a ring of hope.  She answered, startled: 

“I?  No—­her.”

“Her?  Ho!  It is an experience for her—­it is life.  It will do her no harm.”

“No; nothing will do anybody harm if it gives you pleasure.”

At that bitter retort, he kept silence a long time, now and then heaving a long sigh.  His words kept sounding in her heart:  “The soul, not the body, is faithful.”  Was he, after all, more faithful to her than she had ever been, could ever be—­who did not love, had never loved him?  What right had she to talk, who had married him out of vanity, out of—­what?

And suddenly he said: 

“Gyp!  Forgive!”

She uttered a sigh, and turned away her face.