or her,
she breathing only for him; and let the world go, with its fascinations
and its pleasures, its false joys and its false friendships! Let them
ask of life only what truth it possesses; an hour of rest between two
ordeals, a smile between two sobs, and--the right to love each other. To
love each other until that fatal separation which she felt was coming,
until that end which was fast advancing; her poor, frail body being now
only the diaphanous prison of her soul. She did not complain, as she
felt the hour gently approach when, with a last kiss, a last sigh, she
must say to Andras, Adieu!

He, seeing her each day more pale, each day more feeble, was alarmed;
but he hoped, that, when the winter, which was very severe there, was
over, Marsa would regain her strength. He summoned to the castle a
physician from Vienna, who battled obstinately and skilfully against the
malady from which the Tzigana was suffering. Her weakness and languor
kept Marsa, during the cold months, for whole days before the lofty,
sculptured chimney-piece, in which burned enormous logs of oak. As
the flames gave a rosy tinge to her cheeks and made her beautiful eyes
sparkle, Andras said to herself, as he watched her, that she would live,
live and be happy with him.

The spring came, with the green leaflets and the white blossoms at the
ends of the branches. The buds opened and the odors of the rejuvenated
earth mounted subtly into the soft air.

At her window, regarding the young grass and the masses of tender
verdure in which clusters of pale gold or silvery white gleamed like
aigrettes, Marsa said to Andras:

"It must be lovely at Maisons, in the Vale of Violets!" but she added,
quickly:

"We are better here, much better! And it even seems to me that I have
always, always lived here in this beautiful castle, where you have
sheltered me, like a swallow beaten by the wind."

There was, beneath the window, stretching out like a ribbon of silver, a
road, which the mica dust caused, at times, in the sunlight to resemble
a river. Marsa often looked out on this road, imagining that she saw
again the massive dam upon the Seine, or wondering whether a band of
Tzigani would not appear there with the April days.

"I should like," she said one day to Andras, "to hear again the airs my
people used to play."

She found that, with the returning spring, she was more feeble than
she had ever been. The first warmth in the air entered her veins like