Their eyes met over the flames, then Robert remembered the need for keeping up appearances, and said he wanted his fortune told. He could scarcely wait while Meridiana muttered about a fair young lady and a heap of money coming to him in a year or two. Bessie slipped round the brazier and stood beside him, their hands impudently locked, each finger of the boy's clinging round a finger of the girl's.
Meridiana's low sing-song continued:
"It's a gorgeous time I see before you, dear; riches and a carriage and servants in livery, and a beautiful wife decked over with jewels and gold as bright as her hair—success and a fair name, honour and a ripe old age—and remember the poor gipsy woman, won't you, darling?"
But he had already forgotten her. He stood with his arm round Bessie, stooping under the canvas roof, half choking in the brazier reek, while his lips came closer and closer to her face....
"Hir me duval!" said Meridiana to herself, "but they've forgotten the poor person's child."
She saw them go out of the tent, still linked and in their dream, then watched their dark shapes stoop against the sky.
They clung together panting and trembling, for she was really his at last, and he was hers. Before them lay the darkness, but they would go into it hand in hand. She was his, and he was hers.
At last they dropped their arms and stood apart. The dusk was full of rustlings, flittings, scuttlings, kisses....
"God bless you, gorgeous lady and gentleman," cried Meridiana shrilly from the tent—"the dukkerin dukk tells me that you shall always wear satin and velvet, and have honour wherever you go."
Then suddenly a heavy hand fell on Robert's shoulder, and a voice said: