ting
some attack.

Marsa closed the door behind her; and, before speaking a word, the two
faced each other, as if measuring the degree of hardihood each possessed.
The Tzigana, opening fire first, said, bravely and without preamble:

"Well, you wished to see me. Here I am! What do you want of me?"

"To ask you frankly whether it is true, Marsa, that you are about to
marry Prince Zilah."

She tried to laugh; but her laugh broke nervously off. She said, however,
ironically:

"Oh! is it for that that you are here?"

"Yes."

"It was perfectly useless, then, for you to take the trouble: you ask me
a thing which you know well, which all the world knows, which all the
world must have told you, since you had the audacity to be present at
that fete to-day."

"That is true," said Michel, coldly; "but I only learned it by chance. I
wished to hear it from your own lips."

"Do I owe you any account of my conduct?" asked Marsa, with crushing
hauteur.

He was silent a moment, strode across the room, laid his hat down upon
the little table, and suddenly becoming humble, not in attitude, but in
voice, said:

"Listen, Marsa: you are a hundred times right to hate me. I have deceived
you, lied to you. I have conducted myself in a manner unworthy of you,
unworthy of myself. But to atone for my fault--my crime, if you will--I
am ready to do anything you order, to be your miserable slave, in order
to obtain the pardon which I have come to ask of you, and which I will
ask on my knees, if you command me to do so."

The Tzigana frowned.

"I have nothing to pardon you, nothing to command you," she said with an
air more wearied than stern, humiliating, and disdainful. "I only ask you
to leave me in peace, and never appear again in my life."

"So! I see that you do not understand me," said Michel, with sudden
brusqueness.

"No, I acknowledge it, not in the least."

"When I asked you whether you were to marry Prince Andras, didn't you
understand that I asked you also another thing: Will you marry me,
me--Michel Menko?"

"You!" cried the Tzigana.

And there was in this cry, in this "You!" ejaculated with a rapid
movement of recoil-amazement, fright, scorn, and anger.

"You!" she said again. And Michel Menko felt in this word a mass of
bitter rancor and stifled hatred which suddenly burst its bonds.

"Yes, me!" he said, braving the insult of Marsa's cry and look. "Me, who
love you, and whom you have loved!"

"Ah, don't da