. And into that tomb I shall carry, with
your condemnation and farewell, the bitter regret of my love, the weight
of my remorse!"

The convent! The thought of such a fate for the woman he loved filled
Andras Zilah with horror. He imagined the terrible scene of Marsa's
separation from the world; he could hear the voice of the officiating
bishop casting the cruel words upon the living, like earth upon the dead;
he could almost see the gleam of the scissors as they cut through her
beautiful dark hair.

Kneeling before him, her eyes wet with tears, Marsa was as lovely in her
sorrow as a Mater Dolorosa. All his love surged up in his heart, and a
wild temptation assailed him to keep her beauty, and dispute with the
convent this penitent absolved by remorse.

She knelt there repentant, weeping, wringing her hands, asking nothing
but pardon--a word, a single word of pity--and the permission to bury
herself forever from the world.

"So," he said, abruptly, "the convent cell, the prison, does not terrify
you?"

"Nothing terrifies me except your contempt."

"You would live far from Paris, far from the world, far from everything?"

"In a kennel of dogs, under the lash of a slavedriver; breaking stones,
begging my bread, if you said to me: 'Do that, it is atonement!'"

"Well!" cried Andras, passionately, his lips trembling, his blood surging
through his veins. "Live buried in our Hungary, forgetting, forgotten,
hidden, unknown, away from all, away from Paris, away from the noise of
the world, in a life with me, which will be a new life! Will you?"

She looked at him with staring, terrified eyes, believing his words to be
some cruel jest.

"Will you?" he said again, raising her from the floor, and straining her
to his breast, his burning lips seeking the icy ones of the Tzigana.
"Answer me, Marsa. Will you?"

Like a sigh, the word fell on the air: "Yes."

CHAPTER XXXIV

A NEW LIFE

The following day, with tender ardor, he took her away to his old
Hungarian castle, with its red towers still bearing marks of the ravages
of the cannon--the castle which he never had beheld since Austria had
confiscated it, and then, after long years, restored it to its rightful
owner. He fled from Paris, seeking a pure existence, and returned to his
Hungary, to the country of his youth, the land of the vast plains. He saw
again the Danube and the golden Tisza. In the Magyar costume, his heart
beating more proudly under the nationa