“Yes, I think I might,” Florence answered soberly.
“Yet they say God is Love. Why should one fear Love?”
“Who knows? Anyway, your friend is not God. She is only a lady in black. Perhaps she is not Love either. Her true name may be Hate.”
“Ah, yes, perhaps. But I feel it is not so. And many times, oh my friend, when I feel a thing is so it is so. But when I just think it is true, then it is not true at all. Is this not strange?”
“It is strange. But you gypsies are strange anyway.”
“Ah, yes, perhaps. For all that, I am not all gypsy. Once I was not gypsy at all, only a little French girl living in a little chateau by the side of the road.”
“Petite Jeanne,” Florence spoke with sudden earnestness, “have you no people living in France?”
“My father is dead, this I know.” The little French girl’s head drooped. “My mother also. I have no brothers nor sisters save those who adopted me long ago in a gypsy van. Who else can matter?”
“Uncles and aunts, cousins, grandparents?”
“Ah, yes.” The little French girl’s brow clouded. “Now I remember. There was one—we called her grandmother. Was she? I wonder. We play that so many things are true, we little ones. I was to see her twice. She was, oh, so grand!” She clasped her hands as if in a dream. “Lived at the edge of a wood, she did, a great black forest, in a castle.