"I love the night," Arithelli whispered. "It makes me want to do all sorts of things. Do you remember the story of Marguerite of France, who heard the gypsies singing under her window and leant out and called to them to take her away. I feel like that. Do you understand?"
Vardri drew her closer. "I know, my heart. Tell me more."
"There were some gypsies singing under my window this morning," Arithelli went on. "I wished I could have gone out and followed them 'over the hills and far away' like the children in the old rhymes. The Irish and Jewish people have always been wanderers. Perhaps that is why I am fated never to stay long in one place."
He answered her in the same mood.
"We'll start at once, shall we, Fatalité? We'll saddle two of the horses and ride, ride day and night till we come to Montserrat, and there we shall find your gypsies and their tribe. When you come to my country there'll be gypsies too, and they shall play and sing for you, and you'll know what music is for the first time."
"How foolish we are!" Her eyes were wet, but she was smiling. "If
Emile heard me talking like this he would be so angry."
"He talked like this once," Vardri replied. "Poleski was young too not so very long ago, and he loved someone."
"Yes, I know." She found it almost impossible to think of Emile as a lover in spite of the photograph she had found, and the words in his own writing upon his songs. She knew them by heart. "Emile à Marie. Sans toi la mort." And on another, "Etoile de mon âme! Je vous adore de tout mon coeur, ton Emile."
Perhaps it was the memory of this passion of his youth that had made him kind to her.
While they talked and lingered, Sobrenski was descending the rickety ladder that served as a staircase.