"But our love, Marsa? For I love you, and you love me."

"I hate and scorn you. My love is dead. You have killed it. All is over.
Go! And let me never know that there exists a Michel Menko in the world!
Never! Never! Never!"

He felt his own cowardice and shame, and he disappeared, not daring
again to see the woman whose love haunted him, and who shut herself away
from the world more obstinately than ever. She left Paris, and in the
solitude of Maisons-Lafitte lived the life of a recluse, while Michel
tried in vain to forget the bitterness of his loss. The Tzigana hoped
that she was going to die, and bear away with her forever the secret
of her betrayal. But no; science had been mistaken; the poor girl
was destined to live. In spite of her sorrow and anguish, her beauty
blossomed in the shade, and she seemed each day to grow more lovely,
while her heart became more sad, and her despair more poignant.

Then death, which would not take Marsa, came to another, and gave Menko
an opportunity to repair and efface all. He learned that his wife had
died suddenly at Prague, of a malady of the heart. This death, which
freed him, produced a strange effect upon him, not unmingled with
remorse. Poor woman! She had worthily borne his name, after all.
Unintelligent, cold, and wrapped up in her money, she had never
understood him; but, perhaps, if he had been more patient, things might
have gone better between them.

But no; Marsa was his one, his never-to-be-forgotten love. As soon as
he heard of his freedom, he wrote her a letter, telling her that he was
able now to dispose of his future as he would, imploring her to pardon
him, offering her not his love, since she repelled it, but his name,
which was her right--a debt of honor which he wished her to acquit with
the devotion of his life. Marsa answered simply with these words: "I
will never bear the name of a man I despise."

The wound made in her heart by Menko's lie was incurable; the Tzigana
would never forgive. He tried to see her again, confident that, if he
should be face to face with her, he could find words to awaken the past
and make it live again; but she obstinately refused to see him, and,
as she did not go into society, he never met her. Then he cast himself,
with a sort of frenzy, into the dissipation of Paris, trying to forget,
to forget at any cost: failing in this, he resigned his position at the
embassy, and went away to seek adventure, going to fight in the Bal