'Quite warm, Winifred,' I said, as with my heart swelling in my
breast, and with eyelids closing over my eyes from very joy, I drew
her softly upon my breast once more.
'Yes--yes,' I murmured, as the tears gushed from my eyes and dropped
upon the soft hair that I was kissing. 'If God will but let me have
her _thus_! I ask for nothing better than to possess a maniac.'
As we sat locked in each other's arms the head of Sinfi appeared
round the eastern cliff of the gorge where I had first seen Winifred.
The Gypsy had evidently been watching us from there. I perceived
that she was signalling to me that I was not to grasp Winifred. Then
I saw Sinfi suddenly and excitedly point to the sky over the rock
beneath which we sat. I looked up. The upper sky above us was now
clear of morning mist, and right over our heads, Winifred's and mine,
there hung a little morning cloud like a feather of flickering rosy
gold. I looked again towards the corner of jutting rock, but Sinfi's
head had disappeared.
'Dear Prince,' said Winifred, 'how delightfully warm you are! How
kind of you! But are not your arms a little too tight, dear Prince?
Poor Winnie cannot breathe. And this thump, thump, thump, like
a--like a--fire-engine--_ah_!'
Too late I knew what my folly had done. The turbulent action of my
heart had had a sympathetic effect upon hers. It seemed as if her
senses, if not her mind, had remembered another occasion, when, as
she was lying in my arms, the beating of my heart had disturbed her.
In one lightning-flash her real life and all its tragedy broke
mercilessly in upon her. The idea of the 'Prince of the Mist' fled.
She started up and away from me. The awful mimicry of her father's
expression spread over her face. With a yell of 'Fy Nhad,' and then a
yell of 'Father!' she darted round the pool, and then, bounding up
the rugged path like a chamois, disappeared behind a corner of
jutting rock.
At the same moment the head of the Gypsy girl reappeared round the
eastern cleft of the gorge. Sinfi came quickly up to me and
whispered, 'Don't follow.'
'I will,' I said.
'No, you won't,' said she, seizing my wrist with a grip of iron. 'If
you do she's done for. Do you know where she is running to? A couple
of furlongs up that path there's another that branches off on the
right; it ain't more nor a futt-an'-a-half wide along a precipuss
more nor a hundred futt deep. She knows it well. She'll make for
that. The cuss is on her wuss nor ever, judgin' from the gurn and the
flash of her teeth.'
I waited for two or three seconds in the wildest impatience.
'Let's follow her now,' I said.
'No, no,' she whispered, 'not yet, 'less you want to see her tumble
down the cliff.' After a few minutes Sinfi and I went up the main
pathway. Winnie seemed to have slackened her pace when she was out of
sight, for we saw her just turning away on the right at the point
indicated by Sinfi. 'Give her time to get along that path,' said she,
'and then she'll be all right.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account