ildren were eating. The mother, without understanding,
repeated that mysterious name: "The Tzigana."

And Marsa also gazed after them, her ears caressed by the czardas of the
musicians. The big barge disappeared in the distance in a luminous haze;
but the Tzigana could still vaguely perceive the little beings perched
upon the shoulders of the men, and waving, in sign of farewell, pieces
of white cloth which their mother had given them.

A happy torpor stole over Marsa; and, while the guests of the Baroness
Dinati, the Japanese Yamada, the English heiresses, the embassy
attaches, all these Parisian foreigners, led by Jacquemin, the director
of the gayety, were organizing a ballroom on the deck, and asking the
Tzigani for polkas of Fahrbach and waltzes of Strauss, the young girl
heard the voice of Andras murmur low in her ear:

"Ah! how I love you! And do you love me, Marsa?"

"I am happy," she answered, without moving, and half closing her eyes,
"and, if it were necessary for me to give my life for you, I would give
it gladly."

In the stern of the boat, Michel Menko watched, without seeing them,
perhaps, the fields, the houses of Pecq, the villas of Saint-Germain,
the long terrace below heavy masses of trees, the great plain beside
Paris with Mont Valerien rising in its midst, the two towers of the
Trocadero, whose gilded dome sparkled in the sun, and the bluish-black
cloud which hung over the city like a thick fog.

The boat advanced very slowly, as if Prince Andras had given the order
to delay as much as possible the arrival at Maisons-Lafitte, where the
whole fete would end for him, as Marsa was to land there. Already, upon
the horizon could be perceived the old mill, with its broad, slated
roof. The steeple of Sartrouville loomed up above the red roofs of the
houses and the poplars which fringe the bank of the river. A pale blue
light, like a thin mist, enveloped the distant landscape.

"The dream is over," murmured Marsa.

"A far more beautiful one will soon begin," said Andras, "and that one
will be the realization of what I have waited for all my life and never
found--love."

Marsa turned to the Prince with a look full of passionate admiration and
devotion, which told him how thoroughly his love was returned.

The quadrille had ended, and a waltz was beginning. The little Japanese,
with his eternal smile, like the bronze figures of his country, was
dancing with a pre-raphaelite English girl.

"How we