's not worth losing your temper about
trifles on the eve of your wedding-day. And bless your eyes! I don't
mind."

Then she swept a mock curtsy to Elsa.

"Farewell, my pretty one. Good luck to you in your new life."

She nodded and was gone. Her rippling laugh, with its harsh, ironical
ring was heard echoing down the village street.

"Call her back!" shouted Bela savagely, turning on his fiancee.

She looked him straight in that one eye which was so full of menace, and
said with meek but firm obstinacy:

"I will not."

"Call her back," he exclaimed, "you . . ."

He was almost choking with rage, and now he raised his clenched fist and
brandished it in her face.

"Call her back, or I'll . . ."

But already Andor was upon him, had seized him by collar and wrist. He
was as livid as the other man was crimson, but his eyes glowed with a
fury at least as passionate.

"And I tell you," he said, speaking almost in a whisper, very slowly and
very calmly, but with such compelling power of determination that Bela,
taken unawares, half-choked with the grip on his throat, and in agonized
pain with the rough turn on his wrist, was forced to cower before him,
"I tell you that if you dare touch her . . . Look here, my friend," he
continued, more loudly, "just now you said that you didn't know where
I'd sprung from to-day, or why I chose to-day in which to do it. Well!
Let me tell you then. God in Heaven sent me, do you see? He sent me to
be here so as to see that no harm come to Elsa through marrying a brute
like you. You have shown me the door, and I don't want to eat your salt
again and to take your hospitality, for it would choke me, I know . . .
but let me tell you this much, that if you bully Elsa . . . if you
don't make her happy . . . if you are not kind to her . . . I'll make
you regret it to your dying day."

He had gradually relaxed his hold on Bela's throat and wrist, and now
the latter was able to free himself altogether, and to readjust his
collar and the set of his coat. For a moment it almost seemed as if he
felt ashamed and repentant. But his obstinate and domineering temper
quickly got the better of this softened mood.

"You'll make me regret it, will you?" he retorted sullenly. "You think
that you will be allowed to play the guardian angel here, eh? with all
your fine talk of God in Heaven, which I am inclined to think even the
Pater would call blasphemy. I know what's at the back of your mind, my
frie