Yet, on the whole, these first weeks in her new home were happy, too
busy to allow much room for doubting or regret. Several important
concerts were fixed for May. She looked forward to these with intense
eagerness, and pushed everything that interfered with preparation into
the background. As though to make up for that instinctive recoil from
giving her heart, of which she was always subconscious, she gave him all
her activities, without calculation or reserve. She was ready to play
for him all day and every day, just as from the first she had held
herself at the disposal of his passion. To fail him in these ways would
have tarnished her opinion of herself. But she had some free hours in
the morning, for he had the habit of lying in bed till eleven, and was
never ready for practise before twelve. In those early hours she got
through her orders and her shopping--that pursuit which to so many women
is the only real "sport"--a chase of the ideal; a pitting of one's taste
and knowledge against that of the world at large; a secret passion, even
in the beautiful, for making oneself and one's house more beautiful. Gyp
never went shopping without that faint thrill running up and down her
nerves. She hated to be touched by strange fingers, but not even that
stopped her pleasure in turning and turning before long mirrors, while
the saleswoman or man, with admiration at first crocodilic and then
genuine, ran the tips of fingers over those curves, smoothing and
pinning, and uttering the word, "moddam.
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