“It is useless,” he said. “It was well aimed!”
And, turning to Varhely, he cried, in a voice which he strove to render firm:
They opened his coat. The ball had entered his breast just above the heart.
They seated him upon the grass, with his back against a tree.
He remained there, with fixed eyes, gazing, perhaps, into the infinite, which was now close at hand.
His lips murmured inarticulate names, confused words: “Pardon--punishment--Marsa--”
As Yanski Varhely, with his two seconds, again passed the straw-workers, the girls saluted them with:
“Well, where are your other friends? Have they found their sweethearts?”
And while their laughter rang out upon the air, the gay, foolish laughter of youth and health, over yonder they were bearing away the dead body of Michel Menko.
Andras Zilah, with a supreme effort at self-control, listened to his old friend relate this tale; and, while Varhely spoke, he was thinking:
It was not a lover, it was not Menko, whom Marsa expected. Between the Tzigana and himself there was now nothing, nothing but a phantom. The other had paid his debt with his life. The Prince’s anger disappeared as suddenly in proportion as his exasperation had been violent.
He contemplated Marsa, thin and pale, but beautiful still. The very fixedness of her great eyes gave her a strange and powerful attraction; and, in the manner in which Andras regarded her, Count Varhely, with his rough insight, saw that there were pity, astonishment, and almost fear.
He pulled his moustache a moment in reflection, and then made a step toward the door.
Marsa saw that he was about to leave the room; and, moving away from the marble against which she had been leaning, with a smile radiant with the joy of a recovered pride, she held out her hand to Yanski, and, in a voice in which there was an accent of almost terrible gratitude for the act of justice which had been accomplished, she said, firmly:
Varhely made no reply, but passed out of the room, closing the door behind him.
The husband and wife, after months of torture, anguish, and despair, were alone, face to face with each other.
Andras’s first movement was one of flight. He was afraid of himself. Of his own anger? Perhaps. Perhaps of his own pity.
