"I am your
husband, but you would have killed me if I had taken a kiss from your
lips, sealed to me by all our tribes and by your father and mine."
"My lips are my own, my life is my own, and when I marry, I shall marry a
man of my own choosing, and he will not be a Romany," she replied with a
look of resolution which her beating heart belied. "I'm not a pedlar's
basket."
"'Kek! Kek'! That's plain," he retorted. "But the 'wolf' is no lamb
either! I said I would not go till your father set me free, since you had
no right to do so, but a wife should save her husband, and her husband
should set himself free for his wife's sake"--his voice rose in fierce
irony--"and so I will now go free. But I will not take the word to the
Romany people that you are no more of them. I am a true Romany. I
disobeyed my 'Ry' in coming here because my wife was here, and I wanted
her. I am a true Romany husband who will not betray his wife to her
people; but I will have my way, and no Gorgio shall take her to his home.
She belongs to my tent, and I will take her there."
Her gesture of contempt, anger and negation infuriated him. "If I do not
take you to my 'tan', it will be because I'm dead," he said, and his
white teeth showed fiercely.
"I have set you free.
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