Again Dora Parse furiously struggled, but George Lane held her. "What shall be done with her? If that is so?" Aunty Lee, as the oldest woman present, now took up the replies, as was her right and duty: "Let her go to that other, if she wishes, and do you close your tent and your wagon against her." "And if she does not wish?" "Then punish her." "What shall be done to the man?" "Is he a Romany?" "No." Jan Jacobus half started up, but strong hands instantly jerked him down. "He is a gorgio?" "Yes." "Do nothing. We do not soil our hands with gorgios. Let the woman bear the blame. She is a Romany. She should have known better. She is a woman, the wiser sex. It is her fault. Let her be punished." "Do you all say so?" George Lane demanded. "We say so." Again the rippling murmur. Jan Jacobus made a desperate attempt to get on his feet, but, for all his strength, he might as well have tried to uncoil the folds of a great snake as to unbind the many hands that held him, for the Romanys have as many secret ways of restraining a person as the Japanese. George Lane drew his wife tenderly close to him. "She shall be punished," he said, "but first she shall hear, before you all, that I love her and that I know she has not lost the spirit of our love. Her fault was born of lightness of heart and vanity, not of evil." "What is her fault? Name it," commanded Aunty Lee. George Lane looked over at Jan. "Her fault is that she trusted a gorgio to understand the ways of a Romany. For our girls have the spirit of love in their eyes, but no man among us would kiss a girl unless he received the sign from her. But the gorgio men are without honour. To-day, as this woman who is mine stopped to talk with a gorgio, among some trees where I waited, thinking to enter her wagon there, he kissed her, and she kissed him, in return." "Not with the _lubbeny_ kiss--not with that kiss!" Dora Parse cried. "May I be lost as Pharaoh was in the sea if I speak not the truth!" The solemn oath, never taken by any Romany lightly and never falsely sworn to, rang out on the still night air. A cold, but firm little hand was slipped into Dora Parse's. Marda was near, as she had promised, and the hot palm of the princess closed gratefully upon it. George Lane drew his wife upon his breast, and over her glossy head he looked for encouragement to Aunty Lee, who knew what he must do. He was very pale, but he must not hesitate. "Kiss me, my love," he said, loudly and clearly, "here before my people, that I may punish you. Give me the kiss of love, when tongues and lips meet, that you may know your fault."