tion of her
betrothal was to take place. And on that very day Michel Menko appeared
before her, not abashed, but threatening. Her dream of happiness ended
in this reality--Menko saying: "You have been mine; you shall be mine
again, or you are lost!"

Lost! And how?

With cold resolution, Marsa Laszlo asked herself this question, terrible
as a question of life or death:

"What would the Prince do, if, after I became his wife, he should learn
the truth?"

"What would he do? He would kill me," thought the Tzigana. "He would
kill me. So much the better!" It was a sort of a bargain which she
proposed to herself, and which her overwhelming love dictated.

"To be his wife, and with my life to pay for that moment of happiness!
If I should speak now, he would fly from me, I should never see him
again--and I love him. Well, I sacrifice what remains to me of existence
to be happy for one short hour!" She grew to think that she had a right
thus to give her life for her love, to belong to Andras, to be the wife
of that hero if only for a day, and to die then, to die saying to him:
"I was unworthy of you, but I loved you; here, strike!" Or rather to
say nothing, to be loved, to take opium or digitalis, and to fall asleep
with this last supremely happy thought: "I am his wife, and he loves
me!" What power in the world could prevent her from realizing her dream?
Would she resemble Michel in lying thus? No; since she would immediately
sacrifice herself without hesitation, with joy, for the honor of her
husband.

"Yes, my life against his love. I shall be his wife and die!"

She did not think that, in sacrificing her life, she would condemn
Zilah to death. Or rather, with one of those subterfuges by which we
voluntarily deceive ourselves, she thought: "He will be consoled for my
death, if he ever learns what I was." But why should he ever learn it?
She would take care to die so that it should be thought an accident.

Marsa's resolve was taken. She had contracted a debt, and she would pay
it with her blood. Michel now mattered little to her, let him do what he
would. The young man's threat: "To-morrow night!" returned to her mind
without affecting her in the least. The contemptuous curl of her lip
seemed silently to brave Michel Menko.

In all this there was a different manifestation of her double nature: in
her love for Andras and her longing to become his wife, the blood of the
Tzigana, her mother, spoke; Prince Tchereteff, t