"I am not your
prisoner. You tell me to take that word to the Romany people--that you
leave them for ever. I will not do it. You are a Romany, and a Romany you
must stay. You belong nowhere else. If you married a Gorgio, you would
still sigh for the camp beneath the stars, for the tambourine and the
dance--"
"And the fortune-telling," she interjected sharply, "and the snail-soup,
and the dirty blanket under the hedge, and the constable on the road
behind, always just behind, watching, waiting, and--"
"The hedge is as clean as the dirty houses where the low-class Gorgios
sleep. In faith, you are a long way from the River Starzke!" he added.
"But you are my mad wife, and I must wait till you've got sense again."
He sat down on the plank couch, and began to roll a cigarette once more.
"You come fitted out like a Gorgio lass now, and you look like a Gorgio
countess, and you have the manners of an Archduchess; but that's nothing;
it will peel off like a blister when it's pricked. Underneath is the
Romany. It's there, and it will show red and angry when we've stripped
off the Gorgio. It's the way with a woman, always acting, always
imagining herself something else than what she is--if she's a beggar
fancying herself a princess; if she's a princess fancying herself a
flower-girl.
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