She forgot that she no longer had the right to question; she only felt, that, once gone, she would never see him again.  Ah! a thousand times a blow with a knife rather than that!  Was this the way the day, which began so brightly, was to end?

“Where are you going?”

“What does that matter to you?”

“True!  I beg your pardon.  At least—­at least, Monsieur, one word, I implore.  What are your commands?  What do you wish me to do?  There must be laws to punish those who have done what I have done!  Shall I accuse myself, give myself up to justice?  Ah! speak to me! speak to me!”

“Live with Michel Menko, if he is still alive after I have met him!” responded Andras, in hard, metallic tones, waving back the unhappy woman who threw herself on her knees, her arms outstretched toward him.

The door closed behind him.  For a moment she gazed after him with haggard eyes:  and then, dragging herself, her bridal robes trailing behind her, to the door, she tried to call after him, to detain the man whom she adored, and who was flying from her; but her voice failed her, and, with one wild, inarticulate cry, she fell forward on her face, with a horrible realization of the immense void which filled the house, this morning gay and joyous, now silent as a tomb.

And while the Prince, in the carriage which bore him away, read the letters in which Marsa spoke of her love for another, and that other the man whom he called “my child;” while he paused in this agonizing reading to ask himself if it were true, if such a sudden annihilation of his happiness were possible, if so many misfortunes could happen in such a few hours; while he watched the houses and trees revolve slowly by him, and feared that he was going mad—­Marsa’s servants ate the remnants of the lunch, and drank what was left of the champagne to the health of the Prince and Princess Zilah.

CHAPTER XXIII

“The world holds but one fair maiden”

Paris, whose everyday gossip has usually the keenness and eagerness of the tattle of small villages, preserves at times, upon certain serious subjects, a silence which might be believed to be generous.  Whether it is from ignorance or from respect, at all events it has little to say.  There are vague suspicions of the truth, surmises are made, but nothing is affirmed; and this sort of abdication of public malignity is the most complete homage that can be rendered either to character or talent.

The circle of foreigners in Paris, that contrasted society which circled and chattered in the salon of the Baroness Dinati, could not, of necessity, be ignorant that the Princess Zilah, since the wedding which had attracted to Maisons-Lafitte a large part of the fashionable world, had not left her house, while Prince Andras had returned to Paris alone.