brown head away."

It was evident he was making an effort to conquer emotions which were
rising in him; that he was playing on the surface to prevent his deep
feelings from breaking forth. "Instead of which," he added jubilantly,
"here I am, in the nicest room in the world, in a fine bed with springs
like an antelope's heels."

He laughed, and hunched his back into the mattress. It was the laugh of
the mocker, but he was mocking himself. She did not misunderstand. It
was a nice room, as he said. He had never seen it with his eyes, but if
he had seen it he would have realized how like herself it was--adorably
fresh, happily coloured, sumptuous and fine. It had simple curtains,
white sheets, and a warm carpet on the floor; and yet with something,
too, that struck the note of a life outside. A pennant of many colours
hung where two soft pink curtains joined, and at the window and over
the door was an ancient cross in bronze and gold. It was not the simple
Christian cross of the modern world, but an ancient one which had become
a symbol of the Romanys, a sign to mark the highways, the guide of the
wayfarers. The pennant had been on the pole of the Ry's tent in far-off
days in the Roumelian country. In the girl herself there was that which
corresponded to the gorgeous pennant and the bronze cross. It was not in
dress or in manner, for there was no sign of garishness, of the unusual
anywhere--in manner she was as well controlled as any woman of fashion,
in dress singularly reserved--but in the depths of the eyes there was
some restless, unsettled thing, some flicker of strange banners akin
to the pennant at the joining of the pink curtains. There had been
something of the same look in Ingolby's eyes in the past, only with him
it was the sense of great adventure, intrepid enterprise, a touch of
vision and the beckoning thing. That look was not in his eyes now.
Nothing was there; no life, no soul; only darkness. But did that look
still inhabit the eyes of the soul?

He answered the question himself. "I'd start again in a different way if
I could," he said musingly, his face towards the girl. "It's easy to say
that, but I would. It isn't only the things you get, it's how you use
them. It isn't only the things you do, it's why you do them. But I'll
never have a chance now; I'll never have a chance to try the new way.
I'm done."

Something almost savage leaped into her eyes--a wild, bitter protest,
for it was her tragedy, too,