And for a moment she meant it. She meant to go. She saw herself, not in England it is true, but as the central figure in a gorgeous pageant of fidelity, a tragic queen following a beggar man into captivity in a strange land of her own bizarre imagining. They stood in the road for a while, he staring at the stars rising over the dark summits and she looking up the road into the dusk at a mysterious drama playing away in the brightness of the future. And then the moment was past, and neither of them comprehended just then how far their thoughts had gone asunder. And she was sincere in that exclamation, when she asked how he could leave her there alone? For she was alone. The young Jew trotted to and from the town bearing fragments of news, like a faithful dog carrying things in his mouth, but he had given her nothing as yet that constituted certainty. She trembled within the circle of the arm that held her as she suddenly saw herself--alone. She must keep him there yet a little longer. And as they climbed up the gully and reached the iron gate in the garden wall, the tears started to her eyes. He saw them in the light of the lamp in the kitchen and kissed her with a fresh access of emotion. He did not imagine the cause of them. She stared at him through their brightness and smiled, her bosom heaving. She knew he would never never realize they were tears of anger, and were evoked by the perception of the helplessness of women in a world of predatory men. But above and beyond this terrible abstract indignation she found herself regarding him at intervals with smouldering eyes because of a certain subtle complacency in his manner. She could not know that this was the habit of years, or that men of his race are invariably complacent in the presence of their women. She could not conceive him in any rôle in which he had the right to be complacent. Yet he combined it with a tender humility that was very sweet to her in her situation out there on the hillside, playing for a hazardous stake. It was then she would look at him in stupefaction, wondering if she were going mad, and she afterwards would take the young Jew by the hair, dragging his head this way and that, and mutter between her clenched teeth: "_Mon Dieu! Je déteste les hommes!_" And he, poor youth, would assume an expression of pallid horror, for he had no idea what she was talking about, and imagined he had failed to carry out some of her imperious commands. "Oh, Madama, what has thy servant done to deserve this?" he would whimper, less certain than ever of the solidity of his fortunes. And she would look at him, her hand dropping to her side as she gave a little laugh. "Did I hurt you?" she would chuckle, and he would explain that she had not. "But when Madama speaks in that strange tongue her servant is afraid he has not done his errand in the town as she desires." "Tck! Go every day. You will find him soon." "If Madama gave me a letter...."