us limboes, which the vulgar call so foolishly "the
imaginary regions." He was tender, kind, and confidential. He affected
Paquita almost to madness.

"Why should we not go to Sorrento, to Nice, to Chiavari, and pass all
our life so? Will you?" he asked of Paquita, in a penetrating voice.

"Was there need to say to me: 'Will you'?" she cried. "Have I a will? I
am nothing apart from you, except in so far as I am a pleasure for you.
If you would choose a retreat worthy of us, Asia is the only country
where love can unfold his wings...."

"You are right," answered Henri. "Let us go to the Indies, there where
spring is eternal, where the earth grows only flowers, where man can
display the magnificence of kings and none shall say him nay, as in the
foolish lands where they would realize the dull chimera of equality. Let
us go to the country where one lives in the midst of a nation of slaves,
where the sun shines ever on a palace which is always white, where the
air sheds perfumes, the birds sing of love and where, when one can love
no more, one dies...."

"And where one dies together!" said Paquita. "But do not let us start
to-morrow, let us start this moment... take Cristemio."

"Faith! pleasure is the fairest climax of life. Let us go to Asia; but
to start, my child, one needs much gold, and to have gold one must set
one's affairs in order."

She understood no part of these ideas.

"Gold! There is a pile of it here--as high as that," she said holding up
her hand.

"It is not mine."

"What does that matter?" she went on; "if we have need of it let us take
it."

"It does not belong to you."

"Belong!" she repeated. "Have you not taken me? When we have taken it,
it will belong to us."

He gave a laugh.

"Poor innocent! You know nothing of the world."

"Nay, but this is what I know," she cried, clasping Henri to her.

At the very moment when De Marsay was forgetting all, and conceiving the
desire to appropriate this creature forever, he received in the midst of
his joy a dagger-thrust, which Paquita, who had lifted him vigorously in
the air, as though to contemplate him, exclaimed: "Oh, Margarita!"

"Margarita!" cried the young man, with a roar; "now I know all that I
still tried to disbelieve."

He leaped upon the cabinet in which the long poniard was kept. Happily
for Paquita and for himself, the cupboard was shut. His fury waxed at
this impediment, but he recovered his tranquillity, went and found his