During their talk it had come to him how simple it would be to overpower any check to his exit, how devilishly easy to put the girl at a disadvantage; but he drove the thought from him.

In the first place, he was by no means sure that escape was what he wanted--not yet, at any rate; in the second place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along the subterranean wires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish, he would not long cumber the ground.
Yet it was not cowardice or fear of consequences which had held him back; it was a staggering admiration for this girl who had been given to him in marriage so many years ago.

He had fared far and wide in his adventures and amours when he had gold in plenty; and he had swung more than one Gorgio woman in the wild dance of sentiment, dazzling them by the splendour of his passion.

The fire gleaming in his dark eyes lighted a face which would have made memorable a picture by Guido.

He had fared far and wide, but he had never seen a woman who had seized his imagination as this girl was doing; who roused in him, not the old hot desire, but the hungry will to have a 'tan' of his own, and go travelling down the world with one who alone could satisfy him for all his days.
As he sat in this improvised woodland prison he had had visions of a hundred glades and valleys through which he had passed in days gone by--in England, in Spain, in Italy, in Roumania, in Austria, in Australia, in India--where his camp-fires had burned.