h, I think. Leave
me!"

"Marsa!"

"I have hoped for a long time that I was forever delivered from your
presence. I commanded you to disappear. Why have you returned?"

"Because, after I saw you one evening at Baroness Dinati's (do you
remember? you spoke to the Prince for the first time that evening), I
learned, in London, of this marriage. If I have consented to live away
from you previously, it was because, although you were no longer mine,
you at least were no one else's; but I will not--pardon me, I can
not--endure the thought that your beauty, your grace, will be another's.
Think of the self-restraint I have placed upon myself! Although living
in Paris, I have not tried to see you again, Marsa, since you drove me
from your presence; it was by chance that I met you at the Baroness's;
but now--"

"It is another woman you have before you. A woman who ignores that she
has listened to your supplications, yielded to your prayers. It is a
woman who has forgotten you, who does not even know that a wretch has
abused her ignorance and her confidence, and who loves--who loves as one
loves for the first time, with a pure and holy devotion, the man whose
name she is to bear."

"That man I respect as honor itself. Had it been another, I should
already have struck him in the face. But you who accuse me of having
lied, are you going to lie to him, to him?"

Marsa became livid, and her eyes, hollow as those of a person sick to
death, flamed in the black circles which surrounded them.

"I have no answer to make to one who has no right to question me,"
she said. "But, should I have to pay with my life for the moment of
happiness I should feel in placing my hand in the hand of a hero, I
would grasp that moment!"

"Then," cried Menko, "you wish to push me to extremities! And yet I
have told you there are certain hours of feverish insanity in which I am
capable of committing a crime."

"I do not doubt it," replied the young girl, coldly. "But, in fact, you
have already done that. There is no crime lower than that of treachery."

"There is one more terrible," retorted Michel Menko. "I have told you
that I loved you. I love you a hundred times more now than ever before.
Jealousy, anger, whatever sentiment you choose to call it, makes my
blood like fire in my veins! I see you again as you were. I feel your
kisses on my lips. I love you madly, passionately! Do you understand,
Marsa? Do you understand?" and he approached with ou