"Ashamed of you," I cried. "Ah, girl, dinna ye see I canna get my breath for wantin' ye?"
She stood looking at me, her chin well up and an amused and a glad look in her eyes.
"Ah," she said at length, "you are the one who is worth all that a woman has to give, and the blood of all the lawless folk of which I come speaks for you, Jock Stair! For ye woo as a man should woo; and I'm won as a woman should be won, because she has no will left to choose."
And she turned her face toward mine.
"I'm just yours for the asking, Jock."
I drew her to me, and we kissed each other beneath the starlit blue, with the sea wind blowing our hair and the gipsy singing coming, in broken bits of melody, up through the gorse and heather.
I made a song of it after, in my limping verse, which Nancy found one day, and laughed at, I remember:
The gipsies are out, I can see their lights moving,
Race answers to race, 'neath the stars and the blue;
They are living and laughing and mating and loving,