again, and there was I as my father was
before me. But I heard you calling, and I came."

"You never heard me call, Jethro Fawe," she returned quietly. "My
calling of you is as silent as the singing of the stars, where you are
concerned. And the stars do not sing."

"But the stars do sing, and you call just the same," he responded with
a twist to his moustache, and posing against the wall. "I've heard
the stars sing. What's the noise they make in the heart, if it's not
singing? You don't hear with the ears only. The heart hears. It's only
a manner of speaking, this talk about the senses. One sense can do the
same as all can do and a Romany ought to know how to use one or all.
When your heart called I heard it, and across the seas I came. And by
long and by last, but I was right in coming."

His impudence at once irritated her and provoked her admiration. She
knew by instinct how false he was, and how a lie was as common with him
as the truth; but his submission to her father, his indifference to his
imprisonment, forced her interest, even as she was humiliated by the
fact that he was sib to her, bound by ties of clan and blood apart from
his monstrous claim of marriage. He was indeed such a man as a brainless
or sensual woman could yield to with ease. He had an insinuating animal
grace, that physical handsomeness which marks so many of the Tziganies
who fill the red coats of a Gipsy musical sextette! He was not
distinguished, yet there was an intelligence in his face, a daring at
his lips and chin, which, in the discipline and conventions of
organized society, would have made him superior. Now, with all his
sleek handsomeness, he looked a cross between a splendid peasant and a
chevalier of industry.

She compared him instinctively with Ingolby the Gorgio, as she looked at
him. What was it made the difference between the two? It was the world
in a man--personality, knowledge of life, the culture of the thousand
things which make up civilization: it was personality got from life and
power in contest with the ordered world.

Yet was this so after all? Tekewani was only an Indian brave who lived
on the bounty of a government, and yet he had presence and an air of
command. Tekewani had been a nomad; he had not been bound to one place,
settled in one city, held subservient to one flag. But, no, she was
wrong: Tekewani had been the servant and child of a system which was as
fixed and historical as that of Russia or Spain.