"Long live the Serrelinda!" shouted a voice from some rooftop. "Serrelinda! Serrelinda!" echoed others, and for a few moments a perfect storm of acclaim broke out round the jekzha, which was forced to a gradual halt in the crowd like a boat grounding on the slope of a sand-bar.
"Come along now, missus! Easy there, sir, please! Easy now!" repeated the soldiers in the shafts, wiping the sweat from their foreheads and grinning about them like men not unused to it all. "Let the young saiyett through, now. We've got to get her home safe, you know!"
"She can have my home!" shouted a young fellow in a leather apron, who was carrying in one hand a newly-turned chair-leg and looked as though he had downed tools and left his work-bench the minute before. "Ah, and mine, bed and hearth!" bellowed a red-haired man in the livery of Durakkon's household.
Helpless to prevail, as it were, against this deluge of benediction, the voices tossing hither and thither about her like gusts of wind, the girl could only smile speechlessly and then, with a charming pantomime of helplessness and frustration, hold out her arms and shake her head in a mute appeal to her well-wishers to let her pass. She was clad, Selperron now noticed for the first time, very simply, in a short dress of white silk, low-cut and gathered at the waist with a gold belt matching the only jewel she was wearing, a brooch in the likeness of a leopard holding a golden lily. As she half-rose in her seat, grasping the rail and leaning forward to speak to her soldiers, he caught sight, along her lower thigh, of a long, livid scar, plainly the vestige of a wound as grievous as any battle-hardened veteran could boast of. Evidently she was not concerned to hide it. Selperron, as he realized why, was carried away
by a surge of adoration and fervor, such as he might have felt in watching some sacred dance performed by the Thlela. If he could have found words, he might perhaps have declared that despite all its folly and vice, there must be something to be said for the human race if it could produce a girl like this.
Such feelings must find expression or else tear him to pieces. Leaping down from the plinth, he ran across the market-place towards the Street of the Armorers where it curved uphill to the Peacock Gate. Here, just at the foot of the hill, a flower-seller was seated, surrounded by her summer wares-tall, maculate lilies in tubs of water; roses and scarlet trepsis, sharp-scented planella, pale gendonnas and ornate, curve-bloomed iris-yellow, blue and white.
"Give me those-and those-and those!" he said, pointing here and there and in his impatience tugging out the bunches with his own hands and piling them into her astonished arms. "Ay, that'll do!"-for the jekzha was fast approaching.
"Wait, sir! Oh, can't ye just
"Oh, never mind!" cried Selperron. Dragging out his purse, he thrust five twenty-meld pieces into her hand, gathered up the flowers in one great scented, dripping mass and turned about fust as the soldiers reached the foot of the hill. Stumbling forward, he gripped the jekzha's nearside shaft and looked up into the girl's face. At this moment there was nothing in the world but himself and her.
"Saiyett, honor me by accepting these!" he said, lifting up the flowers. "They're nowhere near so beautiful as you, but take them all the same, so that I may never forget you till the day I die."
For a long and terrible instant he waited, standing at the shaft, seeing her initial, startled look and the surprise and uncertainty momentarily crossing her face. Then she smiled full in his eyes, bent forward and took the flowers from him in a single embrace of her open arms. Her neck and shoulders were covered with drops of water and the upper part of her dress was soaked; but of this she took not the least notice. For an instant only she looked away from him to lay the huge, tumbling bouquet beside her on
the seat. Then, once more stooping, she took his face between her two hands and kissed him.
"Happen I shan't forget you, either," she said.
Then the wheel went over his foot. But it was not very heavy, and even though he stifled a quick cry and doubled up his leg, he was hardly aware of the pain, for as the jekzha rolled away up the hill, the girl turned her head, looked back at him and waved.
Selperron was as good as his word. He never saw the Serrelinda again; and he never forgot her for the rest of his life. N'Kasit's present, perforce, was not quite so lavish as he had originally intended, but what matter? He could always give him another next year.
