"Oh, my hand? That's nothing. Emile says it will heal in a day or two. But I felt so stupid. . . . Vardri, you don't think I'm going to be ill, do you? I've never been ill in my life . . . never!"
The boy made some incoherent answer. Her piteous entreaty tore at his heart. Every fibre in his starved body ached with the desire to give her the rest and peace she needed above all things.
What could he do without money? His own miserable wages barely served for necessities. He was only a useless vagabond, an outcast. He ground his teeth together at the thought of his own impotence.
"Courage, little one. They will cheer you again to-morrow. They are cruel, these Spaniards, and fickle. You must not care."
It did not seem strange to either of them that he should be holding her in his arms. After last night everything had changed. Love, Youth, and Nature were hard at work weaving the bonds that drew them together.
The fact that she suffered his caresses had given him the right of manhood to protect her, to be her champion, to fight her battles. If he could do nothing else for her, at least he could fight. For him the crown of happiness could be found in loyal service. Of love-making in its ordinary sense, Vardri neither thought nor dreamed. To have found his Ideal, the one woman, surely that was enough. The innate fastidiousness that goes with good breeding had kept his life clean, his hands unsoiled.
He had hated the other women in the Circus, and felt sorry for them at the same time; and on their side they liked him and regarded him somewhat as a fool. Their voices, their coarse expressions, their light jokes all jarred on him.
He pitied them, for their lives were as hard as his own, and when he could he helped them, for among the wanderers in Bohemia there is an ever-abiding comradeship. The element of fanaticism in his nature, which had once been absorbed by the Cause, now spent itself upon a human being.
The firm yet gentle clasp in which he held her, was the outward symbol of the love and courage that made him tense as steel. To every man there comes his hour, and his was now. Both for her sake and his own he dare not keep her with him. That they had been left undisturbed so long was a miracle. Besides, as she was ill, the sooner she was in bed the better.
He half led, half carried her to the door of her dressing room, and she thanked him with a smile, a gesture. Her throat hurt so much that all speech was an effort.