She sung, and whether it was the music or the strangeness of the interruption, I shall never know; only the wonderful fact remains that, with the sound of her voice, the great passion seemed to die out of the two foes and to give place to a pleasant conceit, comical in its way, that they had only been rollicking together. “Well,” said my father, without closer allusion to his brutality, “the liquor was choice Schiedam, and it’s gone.” He sat down, called for another glass, helped himself to a noggin and pushed the bottle roughly across to Dr. Crackenthorpe, who had already reseated himself opposite. “Sing again, girl,” said my father, but Zyp shook her head. “I never do anything to order,” she said, “but the fairies move me to dance.” She blew out the lamp as she spoke and glided to a patch of light that fell from the high May moon through the window on to the rough boards of the room. Into this light she dipped her hands and then passed them over her hair and face as though she were washing herself in the mystic fountain of the night; and all the time her murmuring voice accompanied the action in little trills of laughter and words not understandable. Presently she fell to dancing, slowly at first and dividing her presence between glow and gloom; but gradually the supple motion of her body increased, step by step, until she was footing it as wildly as a young hamadryad to her own leaping shadow on the floor. Suddenly she sprung from the moonlit square, danced over to Dr. Crackenthorpe and, whispering awfully in his ear, “Beware the demon that sits in the bottle,” ran from the room. My father burst into a fit of laughter, but I think from that day the doctor fully hated her. CHAPTER V. A TERRIBLE INTERVIEW. Zyp had been with us a month, and surely never did changeling happen into a more congenial household. Jason she still held at arm’s length, which, despite my admiration of my brother, I secretly congratulated my heart on, for--let me get over it at the outset--from first to last, I have never wavered in my passion of love for this wild, beautiful creature. The unexpectedness of her coming alone was a romance, the delight of which has never palled upon me with the deadening years. Therefore it was that I early made acquaintance with the demon of jealousy, than whom none, in truth, is more irresistible in his unclean strength and hideousness. Zyp and I were one day wandering under the shadow of the mighty old cathedral of Winton. “I don’t like it, Renny,” she said, pressing up close to me. “It’s awful and it’s grand, but there are always faces at the windows when I look up at them.” “Whose?” I said, with a laugh. “I don’t know,” she said; “but think of the thousands of old monks and things whose home it was once and whose ghosts are shut up among the stones. There!” she cried, pointing. I looked at the old leaded window she indicated, but could see nothing.