For hours I argued this point with myself, and I ended by coming to the conclusion that it was ‘my mind’s eye’ alone that saw the picture of Winifred.

But there was also another question to confront.  What was the cause of Sinfi’s astonishing emotion after the vision vanished?  Such a mingling of warring passions I had never seen before.  I tried to account for it.  I thought about it for hours, and finally fell asleep without finding any solution of the enigma.

I had no conversation of a private nature with Sinfi until the next evening, when the camp was on the move.

’You had no sleep last night, Sinfi; I can see it by the dark circles round your eyes.’

‘That’s nuther here nor there, brother,’ she said.

I found to my surprise that the Gypsies were preparing to remove the camp to a place not far from Bettws y Coed.  I suggested to Sinfi that we two should return to the bungalow.  But she told me that her stay there had come to an end.  The firmness with which she made this announcement made me sure that there was no appeal.

‘Then,’ said I, ’my living-waggon will come into use again.  The camping place is near some of the best trout streams in the neighbourhood, and I sadly want some trout-fishing.’

‘We part company to-day, brother,’ she said.  ’We can’t be pals no more—­never no more.’

‘Sister, I will not be parted from you:  I shall follow you.’

’Reia—­Hal Aylwin—­you knows very well that any man, Gorgio or Romany, as followed Sinfi Lovell when she told him not, ’ud ketch a body-blow as wouldn’t leave him three hull ribs, nor a ounce o’ wind to bless hisself with.’

’But I am now one of the Lovells, and I shall go with you.  I am a Romany myself—­I mean I am becoming more and more of a Romany every day and every hour.  The blood of Fenella Stanley is in us both.’

She looked at me, evidently astonished at the earnestness and the energy of my tone.  Indeed at that moment I felt an alien among Gorgios.

‘I am now one of the Lovells,’ I said, ‘and I shall go with you.’

‘We part company to-night, brother, fare ye well,’ she said.

As she stood delivering this speech—­her head erect, her eyes flashing angrily at me, her brown fists tightly clenched, I knew that further resistance would be futile.

‘But now I wants to be left alone,’ she said.

She bent her head forward in a listening attitude, and I heard her murmur, ’I knowed it ’ud come ag’in.  A Romany sperrit likes to come up in the evenin’ and smell the heather an’ see the shinin’ stars come out.’

While she was speaking, she began to move off between the trees.  But she turned, took hold of both my hands, and gazed into my eyes.  Then she moved away again, and I was beginning to follow her.  She turned and said:  ’Don’t follow me.  There ain’t no place for ye among the Romanies.  Go the ways o’ the Gorgios, Hal Aylwin, an’ let Sinfi Lovell go hern.’