“Have you tried?”

“Why should I, when I love you?”

Gyp sighed; relief, delight, pain—­she did not know.

“Then what is to be done?  Look over there—­that bit of blue in the grass is my baby daughter.  There’s her—­and my father—­and—­”

“And what?”

“I’m afraid—­afraid of love, Bryan!”

At that first use of his name, Summerhay turned pale and seized her hand.

“Afraid—­how—­afraid?”

Gyp said very low: 

“I might love too much.  Don’t say any more now.  No; don’t!  Let’s go in and have lunch.”  And she got up.

He stayed till tea-time, and not a word more of love did he speak.  But when he was gone, she sat under the pine-tree with little Gyp on her lap.  Love!  If her mother had checked love, she herself would never have been born.  The midges were biting before she went in.  After watching Betty give little Gyp her bath, she crossed the passage to her bedroom and leaned out of the window.  Could it have been to-day she had lain on the ground with tears of despair running down on to her hands?  Away to the left of the pine-tree, the moon had floated up, soft, barely visible in the paling sky.  A new world, an enchanted garden!  And between her and it—­what was there?

That evening she sat with a book on her lap, not reading; and in her went on the strange revolution which comes in the souls of all women who are not half-men when first they love—­the sinking of ‘I’ into ‘Thou,’ the passionate, spiritual subjection, the intense, unconscious giving-up of will, in preparation for completer union.

She slept without dreaming, awoke heavy and oppressed.  Too languid to bathe, she sat listless on the beach with little Gyp all the morning.  Had she energy or spirit to meet him in the afternoon by the rock archway, as she had promised?  For the first time since she was a small and naughty child, she avoided the eyes of Betty.  One could not be afraid of that stout, devoted soul, but one could feel that she knew too much.  When the time came, after early tea, she started out; for if she did not go, he would come, and she did not want the servants to see him two days running.

This last day of August was warm and still, and had a kind of beneficence—­the corn all gathered in, the apples mellowing, robins singing already, a few slumberous, soft clouds, a pale blue sky, a smiling sea.  She went inland, across the stream, and took a footpath back to the shore.  No pines grew on that side, where the soil was richer—­of a ruddy brown.  The second crops of clover were already high; in them humblebees were hard at work; and, above, the white-throated swallows dipped and soared.  Gyp gathered a bunch of chicory flowers.  She was close above the shore before she saw him standing in the rock archway, looking for her across the beach.  After the hum of the bees and flies, it was very quiet here—­only the faintest hiss of tiny waves.  He had not yet heard her coming, and the thought flashed through her:  ’If I take another step, it is for ever!  She stood there scarcely breathing, the chicory flowers held before her lips.  Then she heard him sigh, and, moving quickly forward, said: