of light
upon the doorway. A little grey bird fluttered into the radiance
and came tripping across the threshold; a whippoorwill called in the
ashtrees; and the sweet smell of the thick woodland, of the bracken and
fern, crept into the room. The balm of a perfect evening of Summer was
upon the face of nature. The world seemed untroubled and serene; but in
this hidden but two stormy spirits broke the peace to which the place
and the time were all entitled.

After Fleda's scornful words of release and dismissal, Jethro stood for
a moment confounded and dismayed. He had not reckoned with this. During
their talk it had come to him how simple it would be to overpower
any check to his exit, how devilishly easy to put the girl at a
disadvantage; but he drove the thought from him. In the first place,
he was by no means sure that escape was what he wanted--not yet, at any
rate; in the second place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along the
subterranean wires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish,
he would not long cumber the ground.

Yet it was not cowardice or fear of consequences which had held him
back; it was a staggering admiration for this girl who had been given
to him in marriage so many years ago. He had fared far and wide in his
adventures and amours when he had gold in plenty; and he had swung more
than one Gorgio woman in the wild dance of sentiment, dazzling them by
the splendour of his passion. The fire gleaming in his dark eyes lighted
a face which would have made memorable a picture by Guido. He had
fared far and wide, but he had never seen a woman who had seized his
imagination as this girl was doing; who roused in him, not the old
hot desire, but the hungry will to have a 'tan' of his own, and go
travelling down the world with one who alone could satisfy him for all
his days.

As he sat in this improvised woodland prison he had had visions of a
hundred glades and valleys through which he had passed in days gone
by--in England, in Spain, in Italy, in Roumania, in Austria, in
Australia, in India--where his camp-fires had burned. In his visions he
had seen her--Fleda Fawe, not Fleda Druse--laying the cloth and bringing
out the silver cups, or stretching the Turkey rugs upon the ground to
make a couch for two bright-eyed lovers to whom the night was as the
day, radiant and full of joy. He had shut his eyes and beheld hillsides
where abandoned castles stood, and the fox and the squirrel and the haw