“Have you come to see Marsa?  You have had enough of that water-party, then?  It was very pretty; but the sun was devilish hot.  My head is burning now; but it serves me right for not remaining quiet at home.”

Then he raised his heavy person from the armchair he had been sitting in, and went out into the garden, saying:  “I prefer to smoke in the open air; it is stifling in here.”  Marsa, who saw Vogotzine pass out, let him go, only too willing to have him at a distance during her interview with Michel Menko; and then she boldly entered the little salon, where the Count, who had heard her approach, was standing erect as if expecting some attack.

Marsa closed the door behind her; and, before speaking a word, the two faced each other, as if measuring the degree of hardihood each possessed.  The Tzigana, opening fire first, said, bravely and without preamble: 

“Well, you wished to see me.  Here I am!  What do you want of me?”

“To ask you frankly whether it is true, Marsa, that you are about to marry Prince Zilah.”

She tried to laugh; but her laugh broke nervously off.  She said, however, ironically: 

“Oh! is it for that that you are here?”

“Yes.”

“It was perfectly useless, then, for you to take the trouble:  you ask me a thing which you know well, which all the world knows, which all the world must have told you, since you had the audacity to be present at that fete to-day.”

“That is true,” said Michel, coldly; “but I only learned it by chance.  I wished to hear it from your own lips.”

“Do I owe you any account of my conduct?” asked Marsa, with crushing hauteur.

He was silent a moment, strode across the room, laid his hat down upon the little table, and suddenly becoming humble, not in attitude, but in voice, said: 

“Listen, Marsa:  you are a hundred times right to hate me.  I have deceived you, lied to you.  I have conducted myself in a manner unworthy of you, unworthy of myself.  But to atone for my fault—­my crime, if you will—­I am ready to do anything you order, to be your miserable slave, in order to obtain the pardon which I have come to ask of you, and which I will ask on my knees, if you command me to do so.”

The Tzigana frowned.

“I have nothing to pardon you, nothing to command you,” she said with an air more wearied than stern, humiliating, and disdainful.  “I only ask you to leave me in peace, and never appear again in my life.”

“So!  I see that you do not understand me,” said Michel, with sudden brusqueness.

“No, I acknowledge it, not in the least.”

“When I asked you whether you were to marry Prince Andras, didn’t you understand that I asked you also another thing:  Will you marry me, me—­Michel Menko?”

“You!” cried the Tzigana.

And there was in this cry, in this “You!” ejaculated with a rapid movement of recoil-amazement, fright, scorn, and anger.