“You are right, my girl, I have sucked the orange and thrown the skin away, and I’ve picked flowers and cast them by, but that was before the first day I saw you as you now are. You were standing by the Sagalac looking out to the west where the pack-trains were travelling into the sun over the mountains, and you had your hand on the neck of your pony. I was not ten feet away from you, behind a juniper-bush. I looked at you, and I wished that I had never seen a woman before and could look at the world as you did then—it was like water from a spring, that look. You are right in what you say. By long and by last I had a hard hand, and when I left what I’d struck down I never looked back. But I saw you, and I wished I had never seen a woman before. You have been here alone with me with that door shut. Have I said or done anything that a Gorgio duke wouldn’t do? Ah, God’s love, but you were bold to come! I married you by the River Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and here you were alone with me! I had my rights, and I had been trampled underfoot by your father—”
“By your Chief.”
“‘Ay bor’, by my Chief! I had my wrongs, and I had my rights, and you were mine by Romany law. It was for me here to claim you—here where a Romany and his wife were alone together!”
His eyes were fixed searchingly on hers, as though he would read the effect of his words before he replied, and his voice had a curious, rough note, as though with difficulty he quelled the tempest within him. “I have my rights, and you had spat upon me,” he said with ferocious softness.
She did not blench, but looked him steadily in the eyes.
“I knew what would be in your mind,” she answered, “but that did not keep me from coming. You would not bite the hand that set you free.”
“You called me a wolf a minute ago.”
“But a wolf would not bite the hand that freed it from the trap. Yet if such shame could be, I still would have had no fear, for I should have shot you as wolves are shot that come too near the fold.”
He looked at her piercingly, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to a pin-point. “You would have shot me—you are armed?” he questioned.
“Am I the only woman that has armed herself against you and such as you? Do you not see?”