He was surprised and strangely fascinated, attracted by the incongruous mixture of extreme refinement and a sort of haughty unconventionality he found in Marsa.  A moment before, he had noticed how silent, almost rigid she was, as she leaned back in her armchair; but now this same face was strangely animated, illumined by some happy emotion, and her eyes burned like coals of fire as she fixed them upon Andras.

During the whole dinner, the rest of the dining-room disappeared to the Prince; he saw only the girl at his side; and the candles and polished mirrors were only there to form a sparkling background for her pale, midnight beauty.

“Do you know, Prince,” said Marsa, in her rich, warm contralto voice, whose very accents were like a caress, “do you know that, among all those who fought for our country, you are the one admiration of my life?”

He smiled, and mentioned more illustrious names.

“No, no,” she answered; “those are not the names I care for, but yours.  I will tell you why.”

And she recalled, in a voice vibrating with emotion, all that Prince Zilah Sandor and his son had attempted, twenty years before, for the liberty of Hungary.  She told the whole story in the most vivid manner; had her age permitted her to have been present at those battles, she could not have related them with more spirited enthusiasm.

“I know, perfectly, how, at the head of your hussars, you wrested from the soldiers of Jellachich the first standard captured by the Hungarians from the ranks of Austria.  Shall I tell you the exact date? and the day of the week?  It was Thursday.”

The whole history, ignored, forgotten, lost in the smoke of more recent wars, the strange, dark-eyed girl, knew day by day, hour by hour; and there, in that Parisian dining-room, surrounded by all that crowd, where yesterday’s ‘bon mot’, the latest scandal, the new operetta, were subjects of paramount importance, Andras, voluntarily isolated, saw again, present and living, his whole heroic past rise up before him, as beneath the wave of a fairy’s wand.

“But how do you know me so well?” he asked, fixing his clear eyes upon Marsa Laszlo’s face.  “Was your father one of my soldiers?”

“My father was a Russian,” responded Marsa, abruptly, her voice suddenly becoming harsh and cutting.

“A Russian?”

“Yes, a Russian,” she repeated, emphasizing the word with a sort of dull anger.  “My mother alone was a Tzigana, and my mother’s beauty was part of the spoils of those who butchered your soldiers?”

In the uproar of conversation, which became more animated with the dessert, she could not tell him of the sorrows of her life; and yet, he guessed there was some sad story in the life of the young girl, and almost implored her to speak, stopping just at the limit where sympathy might change into indiscretion.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, as she was silent, with a dark shadow overspreading her face.  “I have no right to know your life simply because you are so well acquainted with mine.”