Spring came and passed.  Physically, Gyp grew strong again, but since their return to Mildenham, she had never once gone outside the garden, never once spoken of The Red House, never once of Summerhay.  Winton had hoped that warmth and sunlight would bring some life to her spirit, but it did not seem to.  Not that she cherished her grief, appeared, rather, to do all in her power to forget and mask it.  She only had what used to be called a broken heart.  Nothing to be done.  Little Gyp, who had been told that “Baryn” had gone away for ever, and that she must “never speak of him for fear of making Mum sad,” would sometimes stand and watch her mother with puzzled gravity.  She once remarked uncannily to Winton: 

“Mum doesn’t live with us, Grandy; she lives away somewhere, I think.  Is it with Baryn?”

Winton stared, and answered: 

“Perhaps it is, sweetheart; but don’t say that to anybody but me.  Don’t ever talk of Baryn to anyone else.”

“Yes, I know; but where is he, Grandy?”

What could Winton answer?  Some imbecility with the words “very far” in it; for he had not courage to broach the question of death, that mystery so hopelessly beyond the grasp of children, and of himself—­and others.

He rode a great deal with the child, who, like her mother before her, was never so happy as in the saddle; but to Gyp he did not dare suggest it.  She never spoke of horses, never went to the stables, passed all the days doing little things about the house, gardening, and sitting at her piano, sometimes playing a little, sometimes merely looking at the keys, her hands clasped in her lap.  This was early in the fateful summer, before any as yet felt the world-tremors, or saw the Veil of the Temple rending and the darkness beginning to gather.  Winton had no vision of the coif above the dark eyes of his loved one, nor of himself in a strange brown garb, calling out old familiar words over barrack-squares.  He often thought:  ‘If only she had something to take her out of herself!’

In June he took his courage in both hands and proposed a visit to London.  To his surprise, she acquiesced without hesitation.  They went up in Whit-week.  While they were passing Widrington, he forced himself to an unnatural spurt of talk; and it was not till fully quarter of an hour later that, glancing stealthily round his paper, he saw her sitting motionless, her face turned to the fields and tears rolling down it.  And he dared not speak, dared not try to comfort her.  She made no sound, the muscles of her face no movement; only, those tears kept rolling down.  And, behind his paper, Winton’s eyes narrowed and retreated; his face hardened till the skin seemed tight drawn over the bones, and every inch of him quivered.