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Galsworthy, John, 1867-1933

"Beyond"

Ho! Ho!" And Summerhay thought: 'You old
goat. You never had one!' In the room above, Gyp would still be standing
as he had left her, putting the last touch to her hair--a man would be
a scoundrel who, even in thought, could--"Hallo!" the eyes of the
bust seemed to say. "Pity! That's queer, isn't it? Why not pity that
red-haired girl, with the skin so white that it burns you, and the eyes
so brown that they burn you--don't they?" Old Satan! Gyp had his heart;
no one in the world would ever take it from her!
And in the chair where she had sat last night conjuring up memories, he
too now conjured. How he had loved her, did love her! She would always
be what she was and had been to him. And the sage's mouth seemed to
twist before him with the words: "Quite so, my dear! But the heart's
very funny--very--capacious!" A tiny sound made him turn.
Little Gyp was standing in the doorway.
"Hallo!" he said.
"Hallo, Baryn!" She came flying to him, and he caught her up so that she
stood on his knees with the sunlight shining on her fluffed out hair.
"Well, Gipsy! Who's getting a tall girl?"
"I'm goin' to ride."
"Ho, ho!"
"Baryn, let's do Humpty-Dumpty!"
"All right; come on!" He rose and carried her upstairs.
Gyp was still doing one of those hundred things which occupy women for
a quarter of an hour after they are "quite ready," and at little Gyp's
shout of, "Humpty!" she suspended her needle to watch the sacred rite.


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