“Certainly,” said Michel.  “But you are too imprudent, Marsa.  I am not a man to make recoil by speaking of danger.  Through the gate, or over the wall if the gate is barricaded, I shall come to you again, and you will have to listen to me.”

The lip of the Tzigana curled disdainfully.

“I shall not even change the lock of that gate, and besides, the large gate of the garden remains open these summer nights.  You see that you have only to come.  But I warn you neither to unlock the one nor to pass through the other.  It is not I whom you will find at the rendezvous.”

“Still, I am sure that it would be you, blarsa, if I should tell you that to-morrow evening I shall be under the window of the pavilion at the end of the garden, and that you must meet me there to receive from my hand your letters, all your letters, which I shall bring you.”

“Do you think so?”

“I am certain of it.”

“Certain?  Why?”

“Because you will reflect.”

“I have had time to reflect.  Give me another reason.”

“Another reason is that you can not afford to leave such proofs in my hands.  I assure you that it would be folly to make of a man like me, who would willingly die for you, an open and implacable enemy.”

“I understand.  A man like you would die willingly for a woman, but he insults and threatens her, like the vilest of men, with a punishment more cruel than death itself.  Well! it matters little to me.  I shall not be in the pavilion where you have spoken to me of your love, and I will have it torn down and the debris of it burned within three days.  I shall not await you.  I shall never see you again.  I do not fear you.  And I leave you the right of doing with those letters what you please!”

Then, surveying him from head to foot, as if to measure the degree of audacity to which he could attain, “Adieu!” she said.

“Au revoir!” he rejoined coldly, giving to the salutation an emphasis full of hidden meaning.

The Tzigana stretched out her hand, and pulled a silken bellcord.

A servant appeared.

“Show this gentleman out,” she said, very quietly.

CHAPTER XIV

“Have I the right to lie?”

Then the Tzigana,’s romance, in which she had put all her faith and her belief, had ended, like a bad dream, she said to herself:  “My life is over!”

What remained to her?  Expiation?  Forgetfulness?

She thought of the cloister and the life of prayer of those blue sisters she saw under the trees of Maisons-Lafitte.  She lived in the solitude of her villa, remaining there during the winter in a melancholy tete-a-tete with old Vogotzine, who was always more or less under the effect of liquor.  Then, as death would not take her, she gradually began to go into Parisian society, slowly forgetting the past, and the folly