nyone," said Marsa, turning away.

The gardener returned to the neighborhood of the pavilion, and, examining
the red stains upon the ground, he said: "All the same, this did not
happen by itself. I am going to inform the police!"

CHAPTER XIX

"A BEAUTIFUL DREAM"

It was the eve of the marriage-day of Prince Andras Zilah and
Mademoiselle Marsa Laszlo, and Marsa sat alone in her chamber, where the
white robes she was to wear next day were spread out on the bed; alone
for the last time--to-morrow she would be another's.

The fiery Tzigana, who felt in her heart, implacable as it was to evil
and falsehood, all capabilities of devotion and truth, was condemned to
lie, or to lose the love of Prince Andras, which was her very life. There
was no other alternative. No, no: since she had met this man, superior to
all others, since he loved her and she loved him, she would take an hour
of his life and pay for that hour with her own. She had no doubt but that
an avowal would forever ruin her in Andras's eyes. No, again and forever
no: it was much better to take the love which fate offered her in
exchange for her life.

And, as she threw herself back in her chair with an expression of
unchangeable determination in her dark, gazelle-like eyes, there suddenly
came into her mind the memory of a day long ago, when, driving along the
road from Maisons-Lafitte to Saint-Germain, she had met some wandering
gipsies, two men and a woman, with copper-colored skins and black eyes,
in which burned, like a live coal, the passionate melancholy of the race.
The woman, a sort of long spear in her hand, was driving some little
shaggy ponies, like those which range about the plains of Hungary. Bound
like parcels upon the backs of these ponies were four or five little
children, clothed in rags, and covered with the dust of the road. The
woman, tall, dark and faded, a sort of turban upon her head, held out her
hand toward Marsa's carriage with a graceful gesture and a broad
smile--the supplicating smile of those who beg. A muscular young fellow,
his crisp hair covered with a red fez, her brother--the woman was old, or
perhaps she was less so than she seemed, for poverty brings
wrinkles--walked by her side behind the sturdy little ponies. Farther
along, another man waited for them at a corner of the road near a
laundry, the employees of which regarded him with alarm, because, at the
end of a rope, the gipsy held a small gray bear. As she pas