She was silent for so long that I began to drowse. I awoke with the tightening of her arms about me. When I lifted my face to hers, she commenced to kiss me passionately. “You shall. You shall,” she said. “I’ll make a gipsy of you, so you’ll always remember and never be content with their closed-in world. They’ll take you from me to-morrow, but your heart will never be theirs.” I didn’t understand, but at dawn she showed me. Frost lay on the ground. Every little blade of grass was stiff and sword-like. It was as though the hair of the world had turned white from shock and was standing on end. She led me away through the tall stark forest to a glade so secret that no one could observe us. At first I thought she was escaping with me, carrying me off to her gipsy-land. But she made me kneel down beside her. As the sun wheeled above the cold horizon she snatched a little knife from beneath her dress, and pricked her wrist and mine so that they bled. She held her hand beneath our wrists, catching the blood in her palm so it mingled. Then she let it drip through her fingers, making scarlet stains on the frosted turf. As it fell she spoke to the grass and the trees and the air, telling them that I was hers and, because our blood was mingled, was one of them. “Whenever he hears your voice,” she said, “it will speak to him of me. If he goes where you do not grow, oh grass, then the trees shall call him back. If he goes where you do not grow, oh trees, then the wind shall tell him. His hand shall be as ours, against the works of men. When he hears your voice, oh grass, or your voice, oh trees, or your voice, oh winds, he shall turn his face from walls and come back. Though he leaves us he shall always hear us calling, for he is ours!” And it seemed to me when her voice had ceased that I heard the grass nodding its head. From the dawn came a breath of wind, sweeping through the trees, stooping their leafless branches as though they gave assent. That morning for the first time we had breakfast in the caravan. After breakfast Lilith and I went out together, hand-in-hand. G’liath was harnessing in his donkey. We watched him drive down the road and vanish. I did not want to go back and he knew it; he looked ashamed of himself. The country was bitter and cheerless; it had an atmosphere of parting--everything was withered. Birds huddled close on branches with ruffled feathers. Fields were harsh and cracked. “Little brother,” Lilith said, “one day you will be a man. Until then they will keep you prisoner and try to make you forget all the things which you and I have learnt. They will tell you that the trees have no voices: that it is only the wind that stirs them. They will tell you that rivers are only water flowing. But remember that out in the open they are all waiting for you, and that the other people who have no bodies are there.” I thought of the picture I had seen in the pool and knew what she meant.