leaning, with a smile radiant with
the joy of a recovered pride, she held out her hand to Yanski, and, in a
voice in which there was an accent of almost terrible gratitude for the
act of justice which had been accomplished, she said, firmly:

"I thank you, Varhely!"

Varhely made no reply, but passed out of the room, closing the door
behind him.

The husband and wife, after months of torture, anguish, and despair,
were alone, face to face with each other.

Andras's first movement was one of flight. He was afraid of himself. Of
his own anger? Perhaps. Perhaps of his own pity.

He did not look at Marsa, and in two steps he was at the door.

Then, with a start, as one drowning catches at a straw, as one condemned
to death makes a last appeal for mercy, with a feeble, despairing cry
like that of a child, a strange contrast to the almost savage thanks
given to Varhely, she exclaimed:

"Ah! I implore you, listen to me!"

Andras stopped.

"What have you to say to me?" he asked.

"Nothing--nothing but this: Forgive! ah, forgive! I have seen you once
more; forgive me, and let me disappear; but, at least, carrying away
with me a word from you which is not a condemnation."

"I might forgive," said Andras; "but I could not forget."

"I do not ask you to forget, I do not ask you that! Does one ever
forget? And yet--yes, one does forget, one does forget, I know it. You
are the only thing in all my existence, I know only you, I think only of
you. I have loved only you!"

Andras shivered, no longer able to fly, moved to the depths of his being
by the tones of this adored voice, so long unheard.

"There was no need of bloodshed to destroy that odious past," continued
Marsa. "Ah! I have atoned for it! There is no one on earth who has
suffered as I have. I, who came across your path only to ruin your life!
Your life, my God, yours!"

She looked at him with worshipping eyes, as believers regard their god.

"You have not suffered so much as the one you stabbed, Marsa. He had
never had but one love in the world, and that love was you. If you had
told him of your sufferings, and confessed your secret, he would have
been capable of pardoning you. You deceived him. There was something
worse than the crime itself--the lie."

"Ah!" she cried, "if you knew how I hated that lie! Would to heaven that
some one would tear out my tongue for having deceived you!"

There was an accent of truth in this wild outburst of the Tzigana; a