It was at a ball, at the English embassy, after her return from Pau, that, while smiling and happy, she overheard between two Viennese, strangers to her, this short dialogue, every word of which was like a knife in her heart:  “What a charming fellow that Menko is!” “Yes; is his wife ugly or a humpback? or is he jealous as Othello?  She is never seen.”  “His wife!  Is he married?” “Yes:  he married a Blavka, the daughter of Angel Blavka, of Prague.  Didn’t you know it?”

Married!

Marsa felt her head reel, and the sudden glance she cast at the speakers silenced, almost terrified them.  Half insane, she reached home, she never knew how.  The next day Michel Menko presented himself at her apartments in the hotel where she was living; she ordered him out of her presence, not allowing him to offer any excuse or explanation.

“You are married, and you are a coward!”

He threw himself at her knees, and implored her to listen to him.

“Go!  Go!”

“But our love, Marsa?  For I love you, and you love me.”

“I hate and scorn you.  My love is dead.  You have killed it.  All is over. 
Go!  And let me never know that there exists a Michel Menko in the world! 
Never!  Never!  Never!”

He felt his own cowardice and shame, and he disappeared, not daring again to see the woman whose love haunted him, and who shut herself away from the world more obstinately than ever.  She left Paris, and in the solitude of Maisons-Lafitte lived the life of a recluse, while Michel tried in vain to forget the bitterness of his loss.  The Tzigana hoped that she was going to die, and bear away with her forever the secret of her betrayal.  But no; science had been mistaken; the poor girl was destined to live.  In spite of her sorrow and anguish, her beauty blossomed in the shade, and she seemed each day to grow more lovely, while her heart became more sad, and her despair more poignant.

Then death, which would not take Marsa, came to another, and gave Menko an opportunity to repair and efface all.  He learned that his wife had died suddenly at Prague, of a malady of the heart.  This death, which freed him, produced a strange effect upon him, not unmingled with remorse.  Poor woman!  She had worthily borne his name, after all.  Unintelligent, cold, and wrapped up in her money, she had never understood him; but, perhaps, if he had been more patient, things might have gone better between them.

But no; Marsa was his one, his never-to-be-forgotten love.  As soon as he heard of his freedom, he wrote her a letter, telling her that he was able now to dispose of his future as he would, imploring her to pardon him, offering her not his love, since she repelled it, but his name, which was her right—­a debt of honor which he wished her to acquit with the devotion of his life.  Marsa answered simply with these words:  “I will never bear the name of a man I despise.”