tstretched hands
the Tzigana, whose frame was shaken with indignant anger. "Do you
understand? I love you still. I was your lover, and I will, I will be so
again."

"Ah, miserable coward!" cried the Tzigana, with a rapid glance toward
the daggers, before which stood Menko, preventing her from advancing,
and regarding her with eyes which burned with reckless passion, wounded
self-love, and torturing jealousy. "Yes, coward!" she repeated, "coward,
coward to dare to taunt me with an infamous past and speak of a still
more infamous future!"

"I love you!" exclaimed Menko again.

"Go!" she cried, crushing him with look and gesture. "Go! I order you
out of my presence, lackey! Go!"

All the spirit of the daughters of the puszta, the violent pride of her
Hungarian blood, flashed from her eyes; and Menko, fascinated, gazed at
her as if turned to stone, as she stood there magnificent in her anger,
superb in her contempt.

"Yes, I will go to-day," he said at last, "but tomorrow night I shall
come again, Marsa. As my dearest treasure, I have preserved the key
of that gate I opened once to meet you who were waiting for me in the
shadow of the trees. Have you forgotten that, also? You say you have
forgotten all."

And as he spoke, she saw again the long alley behind the villa, ending
in a small gate which, one evening after the return from Pau, Michel
opened, and came, as he said, to meet her waiting for him. It was true.
Yes, it was true. Menko did not lie this time! She had waited for him
there, two years before, unhappy girl that she was! All that hideous
love she had believed lay buried in Pau as in a tomb.

"Listen, Marsa," continued Menko, suddenly recovering, by a strong
effort of the will, his coolness, "I must see you once again, have one
more opportunity to plead my cause. The letters you wrote to me, those
dear letters which I have covered with my kisses and blistered with my
tears, those letters which I have kept despite your prayers and your
commands, those letters which have been my only consolation--I will
bring them to you to-morrow night. Do you understand me?"

Her great eyes fixed, and her lips trembling horribly, Marsa made no
reply.

"Do you understand me, Marsa?" he repeated, imploring and threatening at
once.

"Yes," she murmured at last.

She paused a moment; then a broken, feverish laugh burst from her lips,
and she continued, with stinging irony:

"Either my letters or myself! It is a barga