is young Hungarian peasant girl. Elsa Kapus had no thought of
self-analysis; complicated sex and soul problems did not exist for her;
she would never have dreamed of searching the deep-down emotions of her
heart and of dragging them out for her mind to scrutinize. The morbid
modern craze for intricate and composite emotions was not likely to
reach an out-of-the-way Hungarian village that slept peacefully on the
banks of the sluggish Maros, cradled in the immensity of the plain.

Elsa had loved Lakatos Andor--the handsome, ardent young lover whose
impetuous courtship of her five years ago had carried her on the wings
of Icarus to a region so full of brightness and of sunlight that it was
no wonder that the wings--which had appeared god-like--turned out to be
ephemeral and brittle after all, and that she was soon precipitated
back and down into the ordinary sea of everyday life.

Elsa had never heard of Icarus, but she had felt herself soaring upwards
on heavenly wings when Andor--his lips touching her neck--had whispered
with passionate ardour: "Elsa, I love you!"

She had never heard of Icarus' fall, but she had experienced her own
from the giddy heights of heavenly happiness, down to the depths of
dull, aching despair. The fall had been very gradual--there had been
nothing grand or heroic or soul-stirring about it: Andor had gone away,
having told her that he loved her, and adjured her to wait for him. She
had waited for three years, patiently, quietly, obstinately, despite the
many and varied sieges laid to her heart and her imagination by the
inflammable, eligible youth of the countryside. Elsa Kapus--the
far-famed beauty of half the county, counted her suitors by the score.
Patiently, quietly, obstinately she kept every suitor at bay--even
though many were rich and some in high positions--even though her
mother, with the same patience, the same quietude, and the same
obstinacy worked hard to break her daughter's will.

But Andor was coming back. Andor had adjured her to wait for him: and
Elsa was still young--just sixteen when Andor went away. She was in no
hurry to get married.

No one, of course, guessed the reason of her obstinate refusal of all
the best matrimonial prizes in the county. No one guessed her
secret--the depth of her love for Andor--her promise to wait for
him--her mother guessed it least of all. Everyone put her stubbornness
down to conceit and to ambition, and no one thought any the worse of h