duty now; and was it necessary
to renounce this delight because hated kisses had once soiled her lips?
No, she could not! And yet--and yet, strict honor whispered to Marsa,
that she should say No to the Prince; she had no right to his love.

But, if she should reject Andras, he would die, Varhely had said it. She
would then slay two beings, Andras and herself, with a single word. She!
She did not count! But he! And yet she must speak. But why speak? Was it
really true that she had ever loved another? Who was it? The one whom she
worshipped with all her heart, with all the fibres of her being, was
Andras! Oh, to be free to love him! Marsa's sole hope and thought were
now to win, some day, forgiveness for having said nothing by the most
absolute devotion that man had ever encountered. Thinking continually
these same thoughts, always putting off taking a decision till the
morrow, fearing to break both his heart and hers, the Tzigana let the
time slip by until the day came when the fete in celebration 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 sacrif