HAPTER IX

"O LIBERTY! O LOVE! THESE TWO I NEED!"

When Zilah came the next day he found Marsa perfectly calm. At first he
only questioned her anxiously as to her health.

"Oh! I am well," she replied, smiling a little sadly; and, turning to the
piano at which she was seated, she began to play the exquisitely sad
romance which was her favorite air.

"That is by Janos Nemeth, is it not?" asked the Prince.

"Yes, by Janos Nemeth. I am very fond of his music; it is so truly
Hungarian in its spirit."

The music fell upon the air like sighs--like the distant tones of a bell
tolling a requiem--a lament, poetic, mournful, despairing, yet ineffably
sweet and tender, ending in one deep, sustained note like the last clod
of earth falling upon a new-made grave.

"What is that called, Marsa?" said Andras.

She made no reply.

Rising, he looked at the title, printed in Hungarian; then, leaning over
the Tzigana till his breath fanned her cheek, he murmured:

"Janos Nemeth was right. The world holds but one fair maiden."

She turned very pale, rose from the piano, and giving him her hand, said:

"It is almost a madrigal, my dear Prince, is it not? I am going to be
frank with you. You love me, I know; and I also love you. Will you give
me a month to reflect? A whole month?"

"My entire life belongs to you now," said the Prince. "Do with it what
you will."

"Well! Then in a month I will give you your answer," she said firmly.

"But," said Andras, smiling beneath his blond moustache, "remember that I
once, took for my motto the verses of Petoefi. You know well those
beautiful verses of our country:

O Liberty! O Love!
These two I need.
My chosen meed,
To give my love for Liberty,
My life for Love.

"Well," he added, "do you know, at this moment the Andras Zilah of
'forty-eight would almost give liberty, that passion of his whole life,
for your love, Marsa, my own Marsa, who are to me the living incarnation
of my country."

Marsa was moved to the depths of her heart at hearing this man speak such
words to her. The ideal of the Tzigana, as it is of most women, was
loyalty united with strength. Had she ever, in her wildest flights of
fancy, dreamed that she should hear one of the heroes of the war of
independence, a Zilah Andras, supplicate her to bear his name?

Marsa knew Yanski Varhely. The Prince had brought him to see her at
Maisons-Lafitte. S