At a frown a statued woe,
Standing pinnacled in pain
Till a kiss sets free!”
Wanza was very silent as I finished. I felt strangely silent, too, and weighted with a slight melancholy. But the singing of the song had put an end to Wanza’s plaint. Her face had lost its peevish lines and grown normal again. The fire burned low, a wind came up from the west and blew the ashes in our faces, there was a weird groaning from the pine trees. The quiet of the night had changed to unrest, overhead the sky had grown darker, the stars brighter. We continued to sit side by side in brooding quiet, until the fire had burnt its heart out, and the air became more chill, and drowsiness began to tug at our eyelids.
I arose then. “Light of my tent,” I said with gay camaraderie, “I will bring the blankets from the wagon for you, and since you are to sleep here you may as well stay and breakfast with Joey and me.”
She looked up at me oddly, sitting cross-legged close to the fire, the light spraying over her dusky carmined cheeks. “Say the words of that gipsy thing again,” she urged.
“I can’t sing any more to-night, girl.”
“Don’t sing—say the words.”
The evening had been so frictionless, that I made haste to comply with this very modest demand; but when I came to the last verse I stumbled, and in spite of myself my voice softened and fired at the witchery of the words:
“Marna with the wind’s will,