The wound made in her heart by Menko’s lie was incurable; the Tzigana would never forgive.  He tried to see her again, confident that, if he should be face to face with her, he could find words to awaken the past and make it live again; but she obstinately refused to see him, and, as she did not go into society, he never met her.  Then he cast himself, with a sort of frenzy, into the dissipation of Paris, trying to forget, to forget at any cost:  failing in this, he resigned his position at the embassy, and went away to seek adventure, going to fight in the Balkans against the Russians, only to return weary and bored as he had departed, always invincibly and eternally haunted by the image of Marsa, an image sad as a lost love, and grave as remorse.

CHAPTER XIII

“My letters or myself”

It was that past, that terrible past, which Michel Menko had dared to come and speak of to the Tzigana.  At first, she had grown crimson with anger, as if at an insult; now, by a sudden opposite sentiment, as she listened to him recalling those days, she felt an impression of deadly pain as if an old wound had been reopened.  Was it true that all this had ever existed?  Was it possible, even?

The man who had been her lover was speaking to her; he was speaking to her of his love; and, if the terrible agony of memory had not burned in her heart, she would have wondered whether this man before her, this sort of stranger, had ever even touched her hand.

She waited, with the idle curiosity of a spectator who had no share in the drama, for the end of Menko’s odious argument:  “I lied because I loved you!”

He returned again and again, in the belief that women easily forgive the ill-doing of which they are the cause, to that specious plea, and Marsa asked herself, in amazement, what aberration had possession of this man that he should even pretend to excuse his infamy thus.

“And is that,” she said at last, “all that you have to say to me?  According to you, the thief has only to cry ’What could I do?  I loved that money, and so I stole it.’  Ah,” rising abruptly, “this interview has lasted too long!  Good-evening!”

She walked steadily toward the door; but Michel, hastening round the other side of the table, barred her exit, speaking in a suppliant tone, in which, however, there was a hidden threat: 

“Marsa!  Marsa, I implore you, do not marry Prince Andras!  Do not marry him if you do not wish some horrible tragedy to happen to you and me!”

“Really?” she retorted.  “Do I understand that it is you who now threaten to kill me?”

“I do not threaten; I entreat, Marsa.  But you know all that there is in me at times of madness and folly.  I am almost insane:  you know it well.  Have pity upon me!  I love you as no woman was ever loved before; I live only in you; and, if you should give yourself to another—­”