he water? And from whom could she know that my crime was
worse than that which hung round that ring?

"And if I were steeped in that crime with which she charges me, how can
an angel, who may know nothing of what happens in hell, put such a
thought in these cold-blooded words.

"They wished to kill me.

"They wished to close the door behind me, as Johanna of Naples did to
her husband, when he was struggling with his assassins.

"And they wished to wash clean the murderer's hands, throwing upon me
the charge of having killed myself because my love was despised.

"They knew everything well, they calculated all with cold mercilessness.
They waited for the hour to come, and whetted the knife before I took it
in my hands.

"And yet I can never hate her! She has plunged the dagger into my heart,
and I remember only the kiss she gave...."

That moment he felt a quiet pressure on his shoulder.

Confused, he looked up. Czipra was standing behind him. The poor gypsy
girl could not allow anyone else to wait on Lorand: she had herself
brought him the water.

The girl's face betrayed a tender fear: she might long have been
observing him, unknown to him.

"What is the matter?" she asked in trembling anxiety.

Lorand could not speak. He merely showed her the letter he had read.

Czipra could not understand the writing. She did not know how one could
poison another with dumb letters, could wound his heart to its depths,
and murder it. She merely saw that the letter made Lorand ill.

She recognized that rose-colored paper, those fine characters.

"Melanie wrote that."

By way of reply Lorand in bitter inexpressible pain turned his gaze
towards the letter.

And the gypsy girl knew what that gaze said, knew what was written in
that letter: with a wild beast's passion she tore it from Lorand's hand
and passionately shred it into fragments and cast it on the ground, then
trampled upon its pieces, as one tramples upon running spiders.

Thereupon she hid her face in her hands and wept in Lorand's stead.

Lorand went towards her and taking her hand, said sadly:

"You see, such are not the gypsy girls whose faces are brown, who are
born under tents, and who cut cards, and make that their religion."

Then with Czipra's hand in his he walked long up and down his room
without a word. Neither knew what to say to the other. They merely
reflected how they could comfort each other's sorrow--and could not find
a way.

This mel