ight?"
said Madame Banfy in a jesting tone, but perhaps not without
significance in the background.

"Certainly!" said Banfy, springing hastily from his chair. "I was
thinking of the fatherland." With that he paced angrily the length of
the room.

When a husband falls into a rage over such a jest it is a sign that he
feels himself hit. With smoothed brow Banfy stood before his trembling
wife, who in the few moments since her husband had entered the room
had been a prey to the most varied feelings; joy and sorrow, fear and
anger, love and jealousy struggled in her excited bosom.

"Margaret," he began, in a dull voice, "you are jealous, and jealousy
is the first step toward hatred."

"Then hate me, rather than forget me!" said his wife, bursting out
vehemently, and then regretting it at once.

"What then do you wish of me? have you any ground for your suspicions?
You certainly do not wish me to give you an account of the roads I
have taken and the people I have spoken with, like the simpleton Giola
Bertai, who when he goes away from home takes a diary with him and
makes out a report of every hour for his other half. Neither do I keep
you under lock and key the way Abraham Thoroczkai does his wife. He
has a lock put on his wife's room during his entire absence and when
he returns requires the whole village to give an oath that his wife
has not spoken with any one in the interval."

Madame Banfy laughed, but the laugh ended in a sigh.

"You evade the question with a jest. I do not accuse you, I do not
keep watch of you, and if you should deceive me I should never find it
out. But listen; there is in the heart of woman a something, a certain
distressing feeling which causes pain without one's knowing why, which
knows how to give information whether the love of one who is our all
is coming or going, without being able to support itself by reasons. I
do not know, and I will not learn where you spend your time, but this
I do know, that you stay away a long while at a time and do not make
haste to come home. Banfy, I suffer--suffer more than you can
imagine."

"Madame," said Banfy, looking at her coldly as he stood before her;
"in this country a suit for divorce does not require much time."

Madame Banfy fell back in her chair, clasped her hands over her heart
in terror and struggled for breath. A trembling cry broke from her
lips and they did not close again. It was as if some one had cut the
strings of her heart wi