Once more he made a step towards the door, but she caught at his sleeve, and entreated him in her own language not to call any one; and her voice was so deliciously soft and beseeching that he yielded, and sat down at the small table and wrote out an address from memory. He handed her the half-sheet of paper when he had dried the writing and had looked over it carefully.
'Poor little thing!' he said in a tone of pity. 'If you ever find him he'll eat you.'
"'You want my blessing, do you, Miss Barrack?'"
Barak again showed signs of great emotion when she put the address into an inside pocket of her man's coat, but it was not of the same kind as before. She took Van Torp's big hand in both her own, and, bending down, [{117}] she laid it on her head, meaning that he might dispose of her life ever afterwards. But he did not understand.
'You want my blessing, do you, Miss Barrack? Some people don't think Brassy Van Torp's blessing worth much, young lady, but you're welcome to it, such as it is.'
He patted her thick hair and smiled as she looked up, and her eyes were dewy with tears.
'That's all right, my dear,' he said. 'Don't cry!'
She smiled too, because his tone was kind, and, standing up, she took out her little leathern bag again quickly, emptied the twists of paper into her hand, selected one by touch, and slipped the rest back. She unwrapped a large stone and held it up to the light, turning it a little as she did so. Van Torp watched her with curiosity, and with an amused suspicion that she had perhaps played the whole scene in order to mollify him and induce him to buy something. So many people had played much more elaborate tricks in the hope of getting money from him, and the stones might be imitations after all, in spite of Logotheti's pencilled line of recommendation.