"Gabrielle will never marry me; I know that, Gipsy. She's gone on your American friend, and is too proud to tell him so. Our affair was all a mistake. Time will put that right, and then you and I will be free. Let's keep it secret, and have the laugh of them all. Will you do that, Maryska?"
Her eyes were wide open; she made an effort to understand.
"You do not forbid me to love you, Harry?"
"Certainly not; aren't we pals?"
"I may come here just when I like?"
"As long as Silvester doesn't get mad about it."
She thought upon this, but half satisfied.
"Will you take me to Paris some day? I want so much to go to Paris. There is life there—life, life, life! One sits in the door of the hotel and sees all the world. These English people make me hate them, but I love the French as my father did. They said in Paris that he was a great artist; I know it was true. He could have compelled all the world to say so if he had not been so idle. There were whole weeks in Ragusa when he lay in bed; sometimes we had no food in the house; then he would paint, and I would go with the picture to the Jew with the beard and bring the money home. That night was always a festa. It was better in Paris, where he had many friends who would come and say, 'Work, beast!' and he would laugh at them and take up his brushes. You know that he was a prince in his own country, Harry? Once when he was very ill, he told me so and gave me some papers. That was at San Gimignano—oh! so many years ago. When he got better he took them away again, and we travelled and travelled, just like two gipsies, together upon the lonely white roads. At last we reached Granada, where there is a mountain with gipsies, running in and out of their holes like the rabbits in the forest. We lived with them a month and he painted many pictures; then we took ship and went to Italy, and he was so ill that I knew we should never go over the white roads together again. Ah, dear God! what a life I have led! and now you—you are the only one in all the world, Harry."
She hid her face from him and put her arms about his neck again. Her passionate story moved him strangely and seemed to set her in a new aspect before him. Was it possible that this waif was what the dead artist had proclaimed her to be? Beneath all the sorry veneer of the Wanderjahre, would he find at last the grains of nobility and of a precious birthright? That would mean very much to a man of his temperament; to one whose whole career had taught him to esteem these things. The mystery of it all fascinated him strangely—she frightened him in such moods as this.
He did not promise to take her to Paris, but, comforting her with fair words, they went round together to Well Walk and he saw Gabrielle for a few brief moments. The talk between them was quite commonplace, but, as often before, the name of John Faber quickly crept into it. Harry turned his heel upon that, and went back to Holly Place in high dudgeon.