ses, and not orange-flowers, which are so common, and only good for
shopgirls. Turn around! You are simply exquisite."

Marsa, paler than her garments, looked at herself in the glass, happy
in the knowledge of her beauty, since she was about to be his, and yet
contemplating the tall, white figure as if it were not her own image.

She had often felt this impression of a twofold being, in those
dreams where one seems to be viewing the life of another, or to be the
disinterested spectator of one's own existence.

It seemed to her that it was not she who was to be married, or that
suddenly the awakening would come.

"The Prince is below," said the Baroness Dinati.

"Ah!" said Marsa.

She started with a sort of involuntary terror, as this very name of
Prince was at once that of a husband and that of a judge. But when,
superb in the white draperies, which surrounded her like a cloud of
purity, her long train trailing behind her, she descended the stairs,
her little feet peeping in and out like two white doves, and appeared at
the door of the little salon where Andras was waiting, she felt herself
enveloped in an atmosphere of love. The Prince advanced to meet her,
his face luminous with happiness; and, taking the young girl's hands,
he kissed the long lashes which rested upon her cheek, saying, as he
contemplated the white vision of beauty before him:

"How lovely you are, my Marsa! And how I love you!"

The Prince spoke these words in a tone, and with a look, which touched
the deepest depths of Marsa's heart.

Then they exchanged those words, full of emotion, which, in their
eternal triteness, are like music in the ears of those who love. Every
one had withdrawn to the garden, to leave them alone in this last,
furtive, happy minute, which is never found again, and which, on the
threshold of the unknown, possesses a joy, sad as a last farewell, yet
full of hope as the rising of the sun.

He told her how ardently he loved her, and how grateful he was to her
for having consented, in her youth and beauty, to become the wife of
a quasi-exile, who still kept, despite his efforts, something of the
melancholy of the past.

And she, with an outburst of gratitude, devotion, and love, in which all
the passion of her nature and her race vibrated, said, in a voice which
trembled with unshed tears:

"Do not say that I give you my life. It is you who make of a girl of
the steppes a proud and honored wife, who asks herself why