Lost!  And how?

With cold resolution, Marsa Laszlo asked herself this question, terrible as a question of life or death: 

“What would the Prince do, if, after I became his wife, he should learn the truth?”

“What would he do?  He would kill me,” thought the Tzigana.  “He would kill me.  So much the better!” It was a sort of a bargain which she proposed to herself, and which her overwhelming love dictated.

“To be his wife, and with my life to pay for that moment of happiness!  If I should speak now, he would fly from me, I should never see him again—­and I love him.  Well, I sacrifice what remains to me of existence to be happy for one short hour!” She grew to think that she had a right thus to give her life for her love, to belong to Andras, to be the wife of that hero if only for a day, and to die then, to die saying to him:  “I was unworthy of you, but I loved you; here, strike!” Or rather to say nothing, to be loved, to take opium or digitalis, and to fall asleep with this last supremely happy thought:  “I am his wife, and he loves me!” What power in the world could prevent her from realizing her dream?  Would she resemble Michel in lying thus?  No; since she would immediately sacrifice herself without hesitation, with joy, for the honor of her husband.

“Yes, my life against his love.  I shall be his wife and die!”

She did not think that, in sacrificing her life, she would condemn Zilah to death.  Or rather, with one of those subterfuges by which we voluntarily deceive ourselves, she thought:  “He will be consoled for my death, if he ever learns what I was.”  But why should he ever learn it?  She would take care to die so that it should be thought an accident.

Marsa’s resolve was taken.  She had contracted a debt, and she would pay it with her blood.  Michel now mattered little to her, let him do what he would.  The young man’s threat:  “To-morrow night!” returned to her mind without affecting her in the least.  The contemptuous curl of her lip seemed silently to brave Michel Menko.

In all this there was a different manifestation of her double nature:  in her love for Andras and her longing to become his wife, the blood of the Tzigana, her mother, spoke; Prince Tchereteff, the Russian, on the other hand, revived in her silent, cold bravado.

She lay down to rest, still feverish from the struggle, and worn out, slept till morning, to awaken calm, languid, but almost happy.

She passed the whole of the following day in the garden, wondering at times if the appearance of Menko and his tomorrow were not a dream, a nightmare.  Tomorrow?  That was to-day.

“Yes, yes, he will come!  He is quite capable of coming,” she murmured.

She despised him enough to believe that he would dare, this time, to keep his word.