a sort of veil
seemed to come down in front of my eyes . . . a dark red veil . . .
things didn't look black to me, you know, Elsa . . . but red. . . . So
now I am quite content just to bide my time--I am quite content that you
should say nothing to me--nothing _good_, I mean. . . . It'll take some
time before the thought of so much happiness has got proper root-hold of
my brain."

"Poor Andor!" she sighed, and turned a gaze full of love upon the sick
man. Her heart was brimming over with it, and so the paralytic got the
expression of it in its fullest measure, since Andor was not entitled to
it yet.

"But just tell me for certain, Elsa . . . so that I shouldn't have to
torment myself in the meanwhile . . . just tell me for certain that one
day . . . in the far-distant future if you like, but one day . . . say
that you will marry me."

"Some day, Andor, I will marry you if God wills," she said simply.

"Oh! But of course He will!" he rejoined airily, "and we will be married
in the spring--or the early summer when the maize is just beginning to
ripen . . . and we'll rent the mill from Pali bacsi--shall we, Elsa?"

"If you like, Andor."

"If I like!" he exclaimed. "If I like! The dear God love me, but I think
that if I stay here much longer I shall go off my head. . . . Elsa, you
don't know how much I love you and what I would not do for your sake.
. . . I feel a different man even for the joy of sitting here and
talking to you and no one having the right to interfere. . . . And I
would make you happy, Elsa, that I swear by the living God. I would make
you happy and I would work to keep you in comfort all the days of my
life. You shall be just as fine as Eros Bela would have made you--and
besides that, there would be a smile on your sweet face at every hour of
the day . . . your hands would be as white as those of my lady the
Countess herself, for I would have a servant to wait on you. And your
father would come and live with us and we would make him happy and
comfortable too, and your mother . . . well! your mother would be happy
too, and therefore not quite so cantankerous as she sometimes is."

To Andor there was nothing ahead but a life full of sunshine. He never
looked back on the past few days and on the burden of sin which they
bore. Bela had been a brute of the most coarse and abominable type; by
his monstrous conduct on the eve of his wedding day he had walked to his
death--of his own accord. Andor had _n