She whispered in his ear the oft-repeated avowal: 

“I love you!  I love you!  I love you!  And I die content, for I feel that you will love me always.  Think a moment!  Could I live?  Would there not be a spectre between you and your Marsa?”

She threw her arms about him as he leaned over the couch upon which she lay, and he made a gesture of denial, unable to speak, for each word would have been a sob.

“Oh, do not deny it!” she said.  “Now, no.  But later, who knows?  On the other hand, you see, there will be no other phantom near you but mine, no other image but mine.  I feel that I shall be always near you, yes, always, eternally, my beloved!  Dear death! blessed death! which renders our love infinite, yes, infinite.  Ah, I love you!  I love you!”

She wished to see once more, through the open window, the sunny woods and the new blossoms.  Behind those woods, a few leagues away, was the place where Tisza was buried.

“I should like to rest by her side,” said the Tzigana.  “I am not of your family, you see.  A princess, I? your wife?  I have been only your sweetheart, my Andras.”

Andras, whiter than the dying girl, seemed petrified by the approach of the inevitable grief.

Now, as they went slowly down the white road, the Tzigani played the plaintive melancholy air of Janos Nemeth, that air impregnated with tears, that air which she used so often to play herself—­“The World holds but One Fair Maiden!”

And this time, bursting into tears, he said to her, with his heart breaking in his breast: 

“Yes, there is but thee, Marsa! but thee, my beloved, thee, thee alone!  Do not leave me!  Stay with me!  Stay with me, Marsa, my only love!”

Then, as she listened, over the lovely face of the Tzigana passed an expression of absolute, perfect happiness, as if, in Zilah’s tears, she read all his forgiveness, all his love, all his devotion.  She raised herself, her little hands resting upon the window-sill, her head heavy with sleep—­the deep, dreamless sleep-and held up her sweet lips to him:  when she felt Andras’s kiss, she whispered, so that he barely heard it: 

“Do not forget me!  Never forget me, my darling!” Then her head drooped slowly, and fell upon the Prince’s shoulder, like that of a tired child, with a calm sweet smile upon her flower-like face.

Like the salute they had once given to Prince Sandor, the Tzigani began proudly the heroic march of free Hungary, their music sending a fast farewell to the dead as the sun gave her its last kiss.

Then, as the hymn died slowly away in the distance, soft as a sigh, with one last, low, heart-breaking note, Andras Zilah laid the light form of the Tzigana upon the couch; and, winding his arms about her, with his head pillowed upon her breast, he murmured, in a voice broken with sobs:  “I will love only, now, what you loved so much, my poor Tzigana.  I will love only the land where you lie asleep.”