She started back to life. My idea had been a happy one. My words had
at once sent her thoughts into the right direction for me.
'Pardon me, Prince,' said she, smiling; 'I had forgotten that you
were here.'
'Winifred, I've warmed this hand, now give me the other.'
She stretched her other hand across her breast and gave it to me.
This brought her entire body close to me, and I said, 'Winnie, you
are cold all over. Won't you let the Prince of the Mist put his arms
round you and warm you?'
'Oh, I should like it so much,' she said. 'But are you warm, Prince?
are you really warm?--your mist is mostly very cold.'
'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.'