and the great things were the
great: the perfect proportion of sane life in a sane world.

Now and again, carried away by the history of things remembered, she
visualized scenes for him with the ardour of an artist and a lover of
created things. He realized how powerful a hold the old life still had
upon her. She understood it, too, for when at last she told of the great
event in England which changed her life, and made her a deserter from
Gipsy life; when she came to the giving of the pledge to a dying woman,
and how she had kept that pledge, and how her father had kept it,
sternly, faithfully, in spite of all it involved, she said to him:

"It may seem strange to you, living as I live now in one spot, with
everything to make life easy, that I should long sometimes for that old
life. I hate it in my heart of hearts, yet there's something about it
that belongs to me, that's behind me, if that tells you anything. It's
as though there was some other self in me which reached far, far back
into centuries, that wills me to do this and wills me to do that. It
sounds mad to you of course, but there have been times when I have had a
wild longing to go back to it all, to what some Gorgio writers call the
pariah world--the Ishmaelites."

More than once Ingolby's heart throbbed heavily against his breast as he
felt the passion of her nature, its extraordinary truthfulness, making
it clear to him by indirect phrases that even Jethro Fawe, whom she
despised, still had a hateful fascination for her. It was all at
variance to her present self, but it summoned her through the long
avenues of ancestry, predisposition; through the secret communion of
those who, being dead, yet speak.

"It's a great story told in a great way," he said, when she had
finished. "It's the most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the
most truthful thing I ever heard. I don't think we can tell the exact
truth about ourselves. We try to be honest; we are savagely in earnest
about it, and so we exaggerate the bad things we do, and we often show
distrust of the good things we do. That's not a fair picture. I believe
you've told me the truth as you see it and feel it, but I don't think
it's the real truth. In my mind I sometimes see an oriel window in the
college where I spent three years. I used to work and think for hours in
that oriel window, and in the fights I've been having lately I've looked
back and thought I wanted it again; wanted to be there in th