She drew away, and with both hands pushed back the hood that she had drawn over her face on leaving the jail.
“Mrs. Batterly wants to send me away, soon after Christmas—away back East to school—where I can forget,” she faltered.
Her blue eyes widened to great round wells of misery, the tears rained down her altered cheeks.
“You will forget,” I soothed her; “it was an accident, my dear.”
“Oh, but Mr. Dale, I felt that I could kill him—for being so disrespectful to me—for speaking so bold—for kissing me! I had murder in my heart! I remember one night in the woods when we were gipsying—do you mind it, Mr. Dale?—you took my hands, and I thought you was going to kiss me, you looked at me so long, but you didn’t—you respected me too much! Why if you had ’a kissed me—not loving me—Mr. Dale, it would’a killed me. And I think I could almost ’a killed you.”
I looked into her face, and suddenly I was back again in the wind-stirred forest with the black elf-locks of a gipsy wench brushing my lips, her hands held close, her eyes, burningly blue, lifted to mine in the firelight. I heard her voice whispering: “If I was a gipsy, and you was a gipsy things would be different.” I recalled the words of the song I had sung:
“Marna of the wind’s will,
Daughter of the sea—”
I sighed. Marna of the wind’s will, indeed!
This conversation left a sore spot in my heart. I was dejected and miserable for days. The day before Christmas arrived and late in the afternoon I rode into Roselake. I purchased some bolts for a sled I was making for Joey, got my mail, and returned home at dusk.