I stared at Cyril's picture of Leæna for which Sinfi was sitting. I heard her say,
'There ain't nothink so cruel as seein' him take on like that; I've seed it afore, many's the time, in old Wales. You'll find her yit. The dukkeripen says you'll marry her yit, and you will. She can't be dead when the sun and the golden clouds say you'll marry her at last. Her as is dead must ha' been somebody else.'
'Sinfi, you know there is no hope.'
'It might not ha' bin your Winnie, arter all,' said she. 'It might ha' bin some poor innocent as her feyther used to beat. It's wonderful how cruel Gorgio feythers is to poor born naterals. And she might ha' heerd in London about St. Winifred's Well a-curin' people.'
'Sinfi,' I said, 'you know there is no hope. And I have no friend but you now—I am going back to the Romanies.'
'No, no, brother,' she said, 'never no more.'
She put on her shawl. I rose mechanically. When she bade Cyril and Wilderspin good-bye and passed out of the studio, I did so too. In the street she stood and looked wistfully at me, as though she saw me through a mist, and then bade me good-bye, saying that she must go to Kingston Vale where her people were encamped in a hired field. We separated, and I wandered I knew not whither.
III
I found myself inquiring for the New North Cemetery, and after a time I stood looking through the bars of tall iron gates at long lines of gravestones and dreary hillocks before me. Then I went in, walking straight over the grass towards a gravedigger digging in the sunshine. He looked at me, resting his foot on his spade.
'I want to find a grave.'