there; but he must have had an instinct that it was dangerous with one
so sensitive. There were other moths, too, round that bright candle, and
they served to keep his attentions from being too conspicuous. Did she
comprehend what was going on, understand how her defences were being
sapped, grasp the danger to retreat that lay in permitting him to
hover round her? Not really. It all served to swell the triumphant
intoxication of days when she was ever more and more in love with
living, more and more conscious that the world appreciated and admired
her, that she had power to do what others couldn't.

Was not Fiorsen, with his great talent, and his dubious reputation,
proof of that? And he excited her. Whatever else one might be in his
moody, vivid company, one would not be dull. One morning, he told her
something of his life. His father had been a small Swedish landowner, a
very strong man and a very hard drinker; his mother, the daughter of a
painter. She had taught him the violin, but died while he was still a
boy. When he was seventeen he had quarrelled with his father, and had to
play his violin for a living in the streets of Stockholm. A well-known
violinist, hearing him one day, took him in hand. Then his father had
drunk himself to death, and he had inherited the little estate. He had
sold it at once--"for follies," as he put it crudely. "Yes, Miss Winton;
I have committed many follies, but they are nothing to those I shall
commit the day I do not see you any more!" And, with that disturbing
remark, he got up and left her. She had smiled at his words, but within
herself she felt excitement, scepticism, compassion, and something she
did not understand at all. In those days, she understood herself very
little.

But how far did Winton understand, how far see what was going on? He
was a stoic; but that did not prevent jealousy from taking alarm, and