She admires you, Madame Gyp. She will
love to dance for you."
Gyp longed for the simple brutality to say: "I don't want to come. I
don't like you!" But all she could manage was:
"Thank you. I--I will ask Gustav."
Once in her seat again, she rubbed the cheek that his breath had
touched. A girl was singing now--one of those faces that Gyp always
admired, reddish-gold hair, blue eyes--the very antithesis of
herself--and the song was "The Bens of Jura," that strange outpouring
from a heart broken by love:
"And my heart reft of its own sun--"
Tears rose in her eyes, and the shiver of some very deep response passed
through her. What was it Dad had said: "Love catches you, and you're
gone!"
She, who was the result of love like that, did not want to love!
The girl finished singing. There was little applause. Yet she had sung
beautifully; and what more wonderful song in the world? Was it too
tragic, too painful, too strange--not "pretty" enough? Gyp felt sorry
for her. Her head ached now. She would so have liked to slip away when
it was all over. But she had not the needful rudeness. She would have
to go through with this evening at Rosek's and be gay. And why not? Why
this shadow over everything? But it was no new sensation, that of having
entered by her own free will on a life which, for all effort, would
not give her a feeling of anchorage or home.
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