refuge to the birch-trees.  It would be over directly, perhaps.  Muffled in distance, the whining drone of that thresher still came travelling, deepening her discomfort.  Then in the hedge, whence the boys had bolted down, a man reared himself above the lane, and came striding along toward her.  He jumped down the bank, among the birch-trees.  And she saw it was Fiorsen—­panting, dishevelled, pale with heat.  He must have followed her, and climbed straight up the hillside from the path she had come along in the bottom, before crossing the stream.  His artistic dandyism had been harshly treated by that scramble.  She might have laughed; but, instead, she felt excited, a little scared by the look on his hot, pale face.  He said, breathlessly: 

“I have caught you.  So you are going to-morrow, and never told me!  You thought you would slip away—­not a word for me!  Are you always so cruel?  Well, I will not spare you, either!”

Crouching suddenly, he took hold of her broad ribbon sash, and buried his face in it.  Gyp stood trembling—­the action had not stirred her sense of the ridiculous.  He circled her knees with his arms.

“Oh, Gyp, I love you—­I love you—­don’t send me away—­let me be with you!  I am your dog—­your slave.  Oh, Gyp, I love you!”

His voice moved and terrified her.  Men had said “I love you” several times during those last two years, but never with that lost-soul ring of passion, never with that look in the eyes at once fiercely hungry and so supplicating, never with that restless, eager, timid touch of hands.  She could only murmur: 

“Please get up!”

But he went on: 

“Love me a little, only a little—­love me!  Oh, Gyp!”

The thought flashed through Gyp:  ‘To how many has he knelt, I wonder?’ His face had a kind of beauty in its abandonment—­the beauty that comes from yearning—­and she lost her frightened feeling.  He went on, with his stammering murmur:  “I am a prodigal, I know; but if you love me, I will no longer be.  I will do great things for you.  Oh, Gyp, if you will some day marry me!  Not now.  When I have proved.  Oh, Gyp, you are so sweet—­so wonderful!”

His arms crept up till he had buried his face against her waist.  Without quite knowing what she did, Gyp touched his hair, and said again: 

“No; please get up.”

He got up then, and standing near, with his hands hard clenched at his sides, whispered: 

“Have mercy!  Speak to me!”

She could not.  All was strange and mazed and quivering in her, her spirit straining away, drawn to him, fantastically confused.  She could only look into his face with her troubled, dark eyes.  And suddenly she was seized and crushed to him.  She shrank away, pushing him back with all her strength.  He hung his head, abashed, suffering, with eyes shut, lips trembling; and her heart felt again that quiver of compassion.  She murmured: