'And what would you do, to pay your way on the road?' he asked.
'I could give you a kiss, on the cheek, once a day,' she said. 'Surely you could not expect more from a free woman.'
'Good luck with the sleen.' said he.
'Do not go,' she begged. 'I am willing, even, to enter into the free companionship with you!'
Boots staggered backwards, as though overwhelmed. 'I could not dream of accepting a sacrifice of such enormity on your part!' he cried.
'I will. I will!' she cried.
'But I suspect,' said Boots, suspiciously, musingly, regarding her, 'that there may be that in you which is not really of the free companion.'
'Sir?' she asked.
'Perhaps you are, in actuality, more fittingly understood as something else,' he mused.
'What can you mean, sir?' she asked.
'Does it not seem strange that you would have fallen madly in love with me at just this moment?'
'Why, no, of course not,' she said.
'Perhaps you are merely trying to save yourself from sleen,' he mused.
'No, no,' she assured him.
'I fear that you are tricking me,' he said.
'No!' she said.
'In any event,' he said, 'you surely cannot expect me to consider you seriously in connection with the free companionship.'
'Why not?' she asked, puzzled.
'A naked woman,' he asked, skeptically, 'encountered beside a public road?'
'Oh!' she cried in misery.
'Do you have a substantial dowry?' he asked. 'An extensive wardrobe, wealth, significant family connections, a high place in society?'
'No!' she said. 'No! No!'
'And if you return to your village I think you will find little waiting for you there but a rope collar and a trip in a sack to the nearest market.'
'Misery!' she wept.
'Besides,' he said, 'in your heart you are truly a slave.'
'No!' she cried.
'Surely you know that?' he asked.
'No!' she cried.
'I do not even think you saw the wondrous veil,' he said.
'I saw it,' she said. 'I saw it!'
'What was its predominant color?' he asked, sharply.
'Yellow,' she said.
'No,' he said.
'Red!' she said.
'No!' he said.
'Blue, pink, orange, green!' she cried.
'Apparently you are a slave,' he said, grimly. 'You should not have tried to masquerade as a free woman. There are heavy penalties for that sort of thing.'
She put her head in her hands, sobbing.
'I wonder if I should turn you over to magistrates,' he said.
'Please, do not!' she wept.
'I will give you another chance,' he said, reaching behind his back, to where he had supposedly hidden the veil at the first sight of the supposed brigands. 'Now,' he said, thrusting forth his hands, 'in which hand is it?'
'The right!' she cried.
'No!' he said.
'The left!' she wept.
'No,' he said, 'it is in neither hand. I left it behind my back!'
'Oh, oh!' she wept.
'On your knees, Slave,' he said, sternly.
Swiftly she knelt, in misery.
'Do not fret, girl,' said Boots. 'Surely you know that you have slave curves.'
'I do?' she asked.
'Yes,' he said. 'In any event, you are far too beautiful to be a mere free companion.'
'I am?' she asked.
'Yes,' he said. 'Your beauty, if you must know, is good enough to be that of a slave.'
Here several of the men in the audience shouted their agreement.
'Is it?' she asked, laughing.
'Yes,' said Boots, struggling to keep a straight face.
'Good!' laughed the Brigella.
There was more laughter from the audience.
'Mind your characterizations!' called the free woman in the audience.
'Forgive me, Lady,' said Boots, trying not to laugh.
'Forgive me, Mistress,' said the Brigella.
'Continue,' said the free woman.
'Are you in charge of the drama?' inquired a man.
The free woman did not deign to respond to him.
'Will you not then accept me as a free companion, noble sir?' called the Brigella to Boots, in his guise as the merchant.
'It is the collar for you, or nothing,' said Boots, grandly.
There was a cheer from the men in the audience.
'Though I may be a slave in my heart,' cried the Brigella, leaping to her feet, 'I am surely not a legal slave and thus, as yet, am bond to neither you nor any man!'
'Many are the slaves who do not yet wear their collars,' said Boots, meditatively, and then suddenly, turned about and, to the amusement of the men in the audience, to sudden bursts of laughter, started directly at the outspoken, troublesome, arrogant free woman standing in the front row, below the stage. He could not resist turning the line in this fashion, it seemed.
'Sleen! Sleen! she cried.
There was much laughter.
'is it true that you are as yet merely an uncollared slave?' asked a man of the free woman.
'He is a sleen, a sleen! cried the free woman.
'I must soon be on my way, ' said Boots to the Brigella, chuckling, trying to return to the play. He was well pleased with himself.
'Go!' she said, grandly, with a gesture.
'If you wish,' he said, 'you may kneel and beg my collar. I might consider granting it to you. I would have to think about it.'
'Never!' she said.
'What are you going to do?' he asked.
'I shall return to the village and take my chances,' she said.
'Very well,' he said, 'but watch out for those two fellows approaching. I fear they may be slavers.'
'They appear to be peddlers, merchant, to me,' she said.
'They do seem so,' admitted Boots. 'But that may be merely their disguise, to take unwary girls unaware.'
'nonsense,' she said. 'I know a peddler when I see one.'
