d her now for six months, and an iron hand seemed to clutch
the heart of this man, who had never known what it was to fear, at the
thought that perhaps Marsa did not return his love.

He had, doubtless, believed that he had perceived in her a tender
feeling toward himself which had emboldened him to ask her to be his
wife. But had he been deceived? Was it only the soldier in him that had
pleased Marsa? Was he about to suffer a terrible disappointment? Ah,
what folly to love, and to love at forty years, a young and beautiful
girl like Marsa!

Still, she made him no answer, but sat there before him like a statue,
pale to the lips, her dark eyes fixed on him in a wild, horrified stare.

Then, as he pressed her, with tears in his voice, to speak, she forced
her almost paralyzed tongue to utter a response which fell, cruel as a
death-sentence, upon the heart of the hero:

"Never!"

Andras stood motionless before her in such terrible stillness that she
longed to throw herself at his feet and cry out: "I love you! I love
you! But your wife--no, never!"

She loved him? Yes, madly-better than that, with a deep, eternal
passion, a passion solidly anchored in admiration, respect and esteem;
with an unconquerable attraction toward what represented, to her
harassed soul, honor without a blemish, perfect goodness in perfect
courage, the immolation of a life to duty, all incarnate in one man,
radiant in one illustrious name--Zilah.

And Andras himself divined something of this feeling; he felt that
Marsa, despite her enigmatical refusal, cared for him in a way that was
something more than friendship; he was certain of it. Then, why did she
command him thus with a single word to despair? "Never!" She was not
free, then? And a question, for which he immediately asked her pardon by
a gesture, escaped, like the appeal of a drowning man, from his lips:

"Do you love some one else, Marsa?"

She uttered a cry.

"No! I swear to you--no!"

He urged her, then, to explain what was the meaning of her refusal, of
the fright she had just shown; and, in a sort of nervous hysteria which
she forced herself to control, in the midst of stifled sobs, she told
him that if she could ever consent to unite herself to anyone, it
would be to him, to him alone, to the hero of her country, to him whose
chivalrous devotion she had admired long before she knew him, and that
now--And here she stopped short, just on the brink of an avowal.

"Well, now