ertainly not recoil before a pistol. Marsa should be the
sole witness of the duel, and the blood of the Prince or of Menko should
spatter her face--a crimson stain upon her pale cheek should be her
punishment.

Early in the evening Andras left the hotel, after slipping into the
pocket of his overcoat a pair of loaded pistols: one of them he would
cast at Menko's feet. It was not assassination he wished, but justice.

He took the train to Maisons, and, on his arrival there, crossed the
railway bridge, and found himself almost alone in the broad avenue which
runs through the park. As he walked on through the rapidly darkening
shadows, he began to feel a strange sensation, as if nothing had
happened, and as if he were shaking off, little by little, a hideous
nightmare. In a sort of voluntary hallucination, he imagined that he was
going, as in former days, to Marsa's house; and that she was awaiting him
in one of those white frocks which became her so well, with her silver
belt clasped with the agraffe of opals. As he advanced, a host of
memories overwhelmed him. He had walked with Marsa under these great
lindens forming an arch overhead like that of a cathedral. He remembered
conversations they had had in the evening, when a slight mist silvered
the majestic park, and the white villa loomed vaguely before them like
some phantom palace of fairyland. With the Tzigana clinging to his arm,
he had seen those fountains, with their singing waters, that broad lawn
between the two long lines of trees, those winding paths through the
shrubbery; and, in the emotion aroused by these well-remembered places,
there was a sensation of bitter pain at the thought of the happiness that
might have been his had fate fulfilled her promises, which increased,
rather than appeased, the Prince's anger.

As his steps led him mechanically nearer and nearer to the house where
she lived, all the details of his wedding-day rose in his memory, and he
turned aside to see again the little church, the threshold of which they
had crossed together--she exquisitely lovely in her white draperies, and
he overflowing with happiness.

The square in front of the sanctuary was now deserted and the leaves were
beginning to fall from the trees. A man was lying asleep upon the steps
before the bolted door. Zilah stood gazing at the Gothic portal, with a
statue of the Virgin Mother above it, and wondered whether it were he who
had once led there a lovely girl, about