word to the Romany people--that you
leave them for ever. I will not do it. You are a Romany, and a Romany
you must stay. You belong nowhere else. If you married a Gorgio, you
would still sigh for the camp beneath the stars, for the tambourine and
the dance--"

"And the fortune-telling," she interjected sharply, "and the snail-soup,
and the dirty blanket under the hedge, and the constable on the road
behind, always just behind, watching, waiting, and--"

"The hedge is as clean as the dirty houses where the low-class Gorgios
sleep. In faith, you are a long way from the River Starzke!" he added.
"But you are my mad wife, and I must wait till you've got sense again."

He sat down on the plank couch, and began to roll a cigarette once more.

"You come fitted out like a Gorgio lass now, and you look like a
Gorgio countess, and you have the manners of an Archduchess; but that's
nothing; it will peel off like a blister when it's pricked. Underneath
is the Romany. It's there, and it will show red and angry when we've
stripped off the Gorgio. It's the way with a woman, always acting,
always imagining herself something else than what she is--if she's a
beggar fancying herself a princess; if she's a princess fancying herself
a flower-girl. 'Mi Duvel', but I know you all!"

Every word he said went home. She knew that there was truth in what
he said, and that beneath all was the Romany blood; but she meant to
conquer it. She had made her vow to one in England that she loved, and
she would not change. Whatever happened, she had finished with Romany
life, and to go back would only mean black tragedy in the end. A month
ago it was a vow and an inner desire which made her determined; to-day
it was the vow and a man--a Gorgio whom she had but now left in the
woods, gazing after her with the look which a woman so well interprets.

"You mean you won't go free from here? Because I was a Romany, and wish
you no harm, I have come here to-day to let you go where you will--to go
back to the place where the patrins show where your people travel. I set
you free, and you say what you think will hurt and shame me. You have
a cruel soul. You would torture any woman till she died. You shall not
torture me. You are as far from me as the River Starzke. I could have
let you stay here for my father to deal with, but I have set you free. I
open the door for you, though you are nothing to me, and I am no more to
you than one of the women you have fool