"Dog! gypsy devil! You dare to oppose me—me, who raised you from a dung-heap!"
"Then let me go back to the dung-heap."
"So you shall! If you will not have the bridegroom I have given you, then take off the bridal dress I gave you, and be off in the gypsy rags you came in. But they want something to complete them—the addition of a thrashing for your audacity. Schinko! Here!"
He himself, her elder brother, her lover, her bridegroom!
Schinko was wearing, as bridegroom, the symbol of his office hanging from his girdle—the short-handled whip. At his mistress's command he raised the whip.
"Strike!" ordered Daimona.
The girl, white with fear, held her face between her hands.
"Brother, can you strike me?"
She had even got so far as to fear the lash. Or was it the thought that it was Schinko's hand which was to strike that made her shrink back? The gypsy's heart was not hard enough to let him strike the blow. He threw the whip away.
"Dog, pick up that whip; or shall I have you and her tied together to the tail of a wild horse? Go on. Slash away until I say enough; fifty lashes for me, fifty for Junker Jevgen."