As she entered the street where Ingolby lived, she suddenly realized the
difficulty before her. She might go to him, but by only one right could
she stay and nurse him, and that right she did not possess. He would,
she knew, understand her, no matter how the world babbled. Why should
the world babble? What woman could have designs upon a blind man? Was
not humanity alone sufficient warrant for staying by his side? Yet would
he wish it? Suddenly her heart sank; but again she remembered their last
parting, and once more she was sure he would be glad to have her with
him.
It flashed upon her how different it would have been, if he and she had
been Romanys, and this thing had happened over there in the far lands she
knew so well. Who would have hinted at shame, if she had taken him to
her father's tan or gone to his tan and tended him as a man might tend a
man? Humanity would have been the only convention; there would have been
no sex, no false modesty, no babble, no reproach. If it had been a man
as old as the oldest or as young as Jethro Fawe it would have made no
difference.
As young as Jethro Fawe! Why was it that now she could never think of
the lost and abandoned Romany life without thinking also of Jethro Fawe?
Why should she hate him, despise him, revolt against him, and yet feel
that, as it were by invisible cords, he drew her back to that which she
had forsworn, to the Past which dragged at her feet? The Romany was not
dead in her; her real struggle was yet to come; and in a vague but
prophetic way she realized it.
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