She snatched her hat from her tousled hair, and threw it on the shabby sofa. Squatting upon the corner of the table, her luggage in her hand, she tried to tell as well as laughter and tears would permit.
"It was after breakfast—Gabrielle had gone down to the church to see the organist. I ran out with all my money in my purse, and went round to Holly Place. She would not tell me where you were until I frightened her—Dieu de mon âme, what a woman she was! But I stamped my foot, and I said the things he used to say, and then she wrote it down for me. At the bottom of the wide hill I saw the voiturier, and called him. When I said that it was to Brighton, he laughed—the gamin that he was! But I was angry once more and I got into the carriage, and I would not get out again. That seemed to please him. He said that he would vote for women, and he took me to the gare. I did not know that you must go by the railway to Brighton, and he laughed when I asked him—but the facteur was there, and he said I was on time. So I came right along—and ecco, I am here! Are you glad that is so, bête sauvage? Are you not pleased that I have come to you?"
He had not an idea what to say to her. The world seemed to be turned upside down in an instant. There was no such town as Brighton in all the kingdom. How the sun shone into that gloomy room! What diamonds of light were everywhere! He had come suddenly to the palace of his dreams and the mistress of it was here. And yet his talk must be a commonplace. The whys and wherefores would not stand aside even in an hour pregnant of such wonders.
"Do you mean to say you bolted, Maryska—just biffed off without a word to anyone? My hat! what will the Silvesters say? What shall we tell them when we go back?"
She swung a little bonnet by the strings and shrugged her shoulders determinedly.
"Do you suppose I am going back to that house? Jamais de ma vie—I am here, and I shall stay. If you do not want me, please say so. I have money and I shall do very well. It is there, and you can count it; the American is my friend, and he has given me money always. So, you see, I do not wish you to work for me; and when the money is all spent, I will go out to the cafés and they will let me dance. Then we shall do very well, you and I, Harry, but not in such an apartment as this. Dio di mi alma! was there ever so dreadful a lodging? And you have lived here three whole days as the woman told me! Three days in such a house—madre mia, what a life! But now we shall go away to the hotel until the money is spent. Say that we shall go, and make me happy, for you know that I could not live here. Will you not say it, Harry—please, at once?"
She put her arms about his neck again and kissed him, while her round eyes looked deeply into his own. He was her lover, and all her creed, learned in the nomad's church, taught her that she was sacred to him and he to her. Upon his side was the swift realisation that he must play the game. He would take her back to London immediately. There was no alternative.
"I'd say anything I could to please you, Maryska, but don't you see that we must think of what other people will say? Why, we're not even engaged, little Gipsy, and if we went to a hotel together, all the idiots we know would shout at us. I can't have that for your sake. If we were married, it would be different. Let's go to London at once, and tell the Silvesters what we mean to do. Now, don't you see, it's the very best thing we can do?"
She did not see, but sat there, a rueful picture, with fifty golden sovereigns on the table beside her and all her worldly possessions in a little unopened parcel. A terrible fear of the return to the gloomy house in Hampstead consumed her. Her eyes filled with tears.
"I will never go back," she said coldly; "if you do not want me, Harry, I will go where no one shall ever see me again. If you love me, why cannot you marry me? I am ready to go to the priest this instant. He said it was all d——d palaver, but I do not refuse to go because of that. Take me now, and I will be your little gipsy wife. Do you not wish it, Harry?"