me back I will at once talk with Pali bacsi--he is getting
tired of managing his property--I know that at times lately he has felt
that he needed a rest, and that he means to ask me to see to everything
for him. He will give me that nice little house on the Fekete Road, and
the mill to look after. We can get married at once, Elsa--when I come
back."

He talked on somewhat ramblingly, at times incoherently. It was easy to
see that he was trying to cheat sorrow, to appear cheerful and hopeful,
because he saw that Elsa was quite ready to give way to tears. It was so
hard to walk out of fairyland just when she had entered it, and found it
more beautiful than anything else in life. The paths looked so smooth
and so inviting, and fairy forms beckoned to her from afar; it all would
have been so easy, if only the good God had willed it so. She thought of
the many sins which--in her innocent life--she had committed, and for
which Pater Bonifacius had given her absolution; perhaps if she had been
better--been more affectionate with her mother, more forbearing with her
father, the good God would have allowed her to have this happiness in
full which now appeared so shadowy.

She fell to wishing that Andor had not been quite so fine and quite so
strong, that his chest had been narrower, or his eyesight less keen.
Womanlike, she felt that she would have loved him just as much and more,
if he were less vigorous, less powerful; and in that case the wicked
government would not want him; he could stay at home and help Pali bacsi
to look after his lands and his mills, and she could marry him before
the spring.

Then the pressure of his arm round her waist recalled her to herself;
she turned and met his glowing, compelling eyes, she felt that wonderful
vitality in him which made him what he was, strong in body and strong in
soul; his love was strong because his body was strong, as was his soul,
his spirit and his limbs, and she no longer wished him to be weak and
delicate, for then it would no longer be Andor--the Andor whom she
loved.

The clang of the distant bell chased away Elsa's last hovering dreams.
Andor did not hear it; he was pressing the girl closer and closer to
him, unmindful of his surroundings, unmindful that he was on the high
road, and that frequently ox-carts went by laden with people, and that
passers-by were hurrying now toward the railway station.

True that no one took any notice of this young man and maid; every