“Well, where are your other friends?  Have they found their sweethearts?”

And while their laughter rang out upon the air, the gay, foolish laughter of youth and health, over yonder they were bearing away the dead body of Michel Menko.

....................

Andras Zilah, with a supreme effort at self-control, listened to his old friend relate this tale; and, while Varhely spoke, he was thinking: 

It was not a lover, it was not Menko, whom Marsa expected.  Between the Tzigana and himself there was now nothing, nothing but a phantom.  The other had paid his debt with his life.  The Prince’s anger disappeared as suddenly in proportion as his exasperation had been violent.

He contemplated Marsa, thin and pale, but beautiful still.  The very fixedness of her great eyes gave her a strange and powerful attraction; and, in the manner in which Andras regarded her, Count Varhely, with his rough insight, saw that there were pity, astonishment, and almost fear.

He pulled his moustache a moment in reflection, and then made a step toward the door.

Marsa saw that he was about to leave the room; and, moving away from the marble against which she had been leaning, with a smile radiant with the joy of a recovered pride, she held out her hand to Yanski, and, in a voice in which there was an accent of almost terrible gratitude for the act of justice which had been accomplished, she said, firmly: 

“I thank you, Varhely!”

Varhely made no reply, but passed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

The husband and wife, after months of torture, anguish, and despair, were alone, face to face with each other.

Andras’s first movement was one of flight.  He was afraid of himself.  Of his own anger?  Perhaps.  Perhaps of his own pity.

He did not look at Marsa, and in two steps he was at the door.

Then, with a start, as one drowning catches at a straw, as one condemned to death makes a last appeal for mercy, with a feeble, despairing cry like that of a child, a strange contrast to the almost savage thanks given to Varhely, she exclaimed: 

“Ah!  I implore you, listen to me!”

Andras stopped.

“What have you to say to me?” he asked.

“Nothing—­nothing but this:  Forgive! ah, forgive!  I have seen you once more; forgive me, and let me disappear; but, at least, carrying away with me a word from you which is not a condemnation.”

“I might forgive,” said Andras; “but I could not forget.”

“I do not ask you to forget, I do not ask you that!  Does one ever forget?  And yet—­yes, one does forget, one does forget, I know it.  You are the only thing in all my existence, I know only you, I think only of you.  I have loved only you!”

Andras shivered, no longer able to fly, moved to the depths of his being by the tones of this adored voice, so long unheard.