ng the miserable bits of furniture something of a
rub-down and general furbishing-up: a thing she could only do when her
mother was away, for Irma hated her to do things which appeared like a
comment on her own dirty, slatternly ways.

Cleanliness, order and a love of dainty tidiness in the home are marked
characteristics of the true Hungarian peasantry: the cottages for the
most part are miracles of brightness, brightly polished floors, brightly
polished pewter, brightly covered feather pillows. Kapus Irma was a
notable exception to the rule, and Elsa had often shed bitter tears of
shame when one or other of her many admirers followed her into her home
and saw the squalor which reigned in it--the dirt and untidiness. She
was most ashamed when Bela was here, for he made sneering remarks about
it all, and seemed to take it for granted that she was as untidy, as
slovenly as her mother. He read her long lectures about his sister's
fine qualities and about the manner in which he would expect his own
wife to keep her future home, and made it an excuse for some of his
most dictatorial pronouncements and rough, masterful ways.

But to-night even this had not mattered--though he had spoken very
cruelly about the hemp--nothing now mattered any more. To-day she had
been called for the third time in church, to-morrow evening she would
say good-bye to her maidenhood and take her place for the last time
among her girl-friends: after to-morrow's feast she would be a
matron--her place would be a different one. And on Tuesday would come
the wedding and she would be Eros Bela's wedded wife.

So what did anything matter any more? After Tuesday she would not even
be allowed to think of Andor, to dream that he had come back and that
the past two dreadful years had only been an ugly nightmare. Once she
was Eros Bela's wedded wife, it would be no longer right to think of
that last morning five years ago, of that final csardas, and the words
which Andor had whispered: above all, it would no longer be right to
remember that kiss--his warm lips upon her bare shoulder, and later on,
out under the acacia tree, that last kiss upon her lips.

She closed her eyes for a moment; a sigh of infinite regret escaped
through her parted lips. It would have been so beautiful, if only it
could have come true! if only something had been left to her of those
enchanted hours, something more tangible than just a memory.

Resolutely now she went back to her wo