“You like pleasure, I believe.”

Fiorsen said violently: 

“Look here:  I have done with your friendship—­you are no friend to me.  I have never really known you, and I should not wish to.  It is finished.  Leave me in peace.”

Rosek smiled.

“My dear, that is all very well, but friendships are not finished like that.  Moreover, you owe me a thousand pounds.”

“Well, I will pay it.”  Rosek’s eyebrows mounted.  “I will.  Gyp will lend it to me.”

“Oh!  Is Gyp so fond of you as that?  I thought she only loved her music-lessons.”

Crouching forward with his knees drawn up, Fiorsen hissed out: 

“Don’t talk of Gyp!  Get out of this!  I will pay you your thousand pounds.”

Rosek, still smiling, answered: 

“Gustav, don’t be a fool!  With a violin to your shoulder, you are a man.  Without—­you are a child.  Lie quiet, my friend, and think of Mr. Wagge.  But you had better come and talk it over with me.  Good-bye for the moment.  Calm yourself.”  And, flipping the ash off his cigarette on to the tray by Fiorsen’s elbow, he nodded and went.

Fiorsen, who had leaped out of bed, put his hand to his head.  The cursed fellow!  Cursed be every one of them—­the father and the girl, Rosek and all the other sharks!  He went out on to the landing.  The house was quite still below.  Rosek had gone—­good riddance!  He called, “Gyp!” No answer.  He went into her room.  Its superlative daintiness struck his fancy.  A scent of cyclamen!  He looked out into the garden.  There was the baby at the end, and that fat woman.  No Gyp!  Never in when she was wanted.  Wagge!  He shivered; and, going back into his bedroom, took a brandy-bottle from a locked cupboard and drank some.  It steadied him; he locked up the cupboard again, and dressed.

Going out to the music-room, he stopped under the trees to make passes with his fingers at the baby.  Sometimes he felt that it was an adorable little creature, with its big, dark eyes so like Gyp’s.  Sometimes it excited his disgust—­a discoloured brat.  This morning, while looking at it, he thought suddenly of the other that was coming—­and grimaced.  Catching Betty’s stare of horrified amazement at the face he was making at her darling, he burst into a laugh and turned away into the music-room.

While he was keying up his violin, Gyp’s conduct in never having come there for so long struck him as bitterly unjust.  The girl—­who cared about the wretched girl?  As if she made any real difference!  It was all so much deeper than that.  Gyp had never loved him, never given him what he wanted, never quenched his thirst of her!  That was the heart of it.  No other woman he had ever had to do with had been like that—­kept his thirst unquenched.  No; he had always tired of them before they tired of him.  She gave him nothing really—­nothing!  Had she no heart or did she give it elsewhere?  What was