offering a love that she despised, and yet which was love and passion of
a kind. It was a passion natural to the people from whom she came, and
to such as Jethro Fawe it was something more than sensual longing and
the aboriginal desire of possession. She realized it, and was not wholly
revolted by it, even while her mind was fleeing to where the Master
Gorgio lay wounded, it might be unto death; even while she knew that
this man before her, by some means, had laid Ingolby low. She was all at
once a human being torn by contending forces.

Jethro's drop to the ground broke the sudden trance into which his words
had thrown her. She shook herself as with an effort of control. Then
leaning over the window-sill, and, looking down at him, now grown so
distinct that she could see his features, her eyes having become used to
the half-light of the approaching dawn, she said with something almost
like gentleness:

"Once more I say, you must go and come no more. You are too far off
from me. You belong to that which is for the ignorant, or the low, the
vicious and the bad. Behind the free life of the Romany is only the
thing that the beasts of the field have. I have done with it for ever.
Find a Romany who will marry you. As for me, I would rather die than
do so, and I should die before it could come to pass. If you stay here
longer I will call the Ry."

Presently the feeling that he had been responsible for the disaster
to Ingolby came upon her with great force, and as suddenly as she had
softened towards this man she hardened again.

"Go, before there comes to you the death you deserve," she added, and
turned away.

At that moment footsteps sounded near, and almost instantly there
emerged from a pathway which made a short cut to the house, the figure
of old Gabriel Druse. They had not heard him till he was within a few
feet of where Jethro Fawe stood. His walking had been muffled in the
dust of the pathway.

The Ry started when he saw Jethro Fawe; then he made a motion as though
he would seize the intruder, who was too dumbfounded to flee; but he
recovered himself, and gazed up at the open window.

"Fleda!" he called.

She came to the window again.

"Has this man come here against your will?" he asked, not as though
seeking information, but confirmation of his own understanding.

"He is not here by my will," she answered. "He came to sing the Song of
Hate under my window, to tell me that he had--"

"That I had broug