“It is yours,” she said, striding back to me. “Take it!”
“You can keep it,” I answered, with my little nose in the air. “A lady does not want for money.”
She slipped it into her pocket, and fell on her knees before me.
“Nor beauty, nor love, nor silken raiment,” she cried; “and yet they are not all. Think, my darling! There be no need so wild but the poor grateful gipsy may show a way to gratify it.”
I laughed, half annoyed and half frightened; and then, suddenly and oddly, there came into my head the thought of the stocking needle the gouvernante was wont to stick into my bosom at meals, to prevent me stooping and rounding my back. Must I confess, my Alcide, that there was ever a time when thy Diane was a little less or more than a sylph?
“Make me light,” I said, “so that I can dance without feeling the ground.”
She looked at me strangely a moment, then all about her in a stealthy way, while she slipped her hand into her pocket.
“Hush!” she said. “For none other but you. Only tell not of it.” And she brought up a little greasy packet, of parchment writ round with characters, like a Hebrew phylactery.
“Have you ever heard tell of the duck-stone?” she whispered.
I shook my head, full of curiosity.