“And is that,” she said at last, “all that you have to say to me? According to you, the thief has only to cry ‘What could I do? I loved that money, and so I stole it.’ Ah,” rising abruptly, “this interview has lasted too long! Good-evening!” She walked steadily toward the door; but Michel, hastening round the other side of the table, barred her exit, speaking in a suppliant tone, in which, however, there was a hidden threat: “Marsa! Marsa, I implore you, do not marry Prince Andras! Do not marry him if you do not wish some horrible tragedy to happen to you and me!” “Really?” she retorted. “Do I understand that it is you who now threaten to kill me?” “I do not threaten; I entreat, Marsa. But you know all that there is in me at times of madness and folly. I am almost insane: you know it well. Have pity upon me! I love you as no woman was ever loved before; I live only in you; and, if you should give yourself to another--” “Ah!” she said, interrupting him with a haughty gesture, “you speak to me as if you had a right to dictate my actions. I have given you my forgetfulness after giving you my love. That is enough, I think. Leave me!” “Marsa!” “I have hoped for a long time that I was forever delivered from your presence. I commanded you to disappear. Why have you returned?” “Because, after I saw you one evening at Baroness Dinati’s (do you remember? you spoke to the Prince for the first time that evening), I learned, in London, of this marriage. If I have consented to live away from you previously, it was because, although you were no longer mine, you at least were no one else’s; but I will not--pardon me, I can not--endure the thought that your beauty, your grace, will be another’s. Think of the self-restraint I have placed upon myself! Although living in Paris, I have not tried to see you again, Marsa, since you drove me from your presence; it was by chance that I met you at the Baroness’s; but now--” “It is another woman you have before you. A woman who ignores that she has listened to your supplications, yielded to your prayers. It is a woman who has forgotten you, who does not even know that a wretch has abused her ignorance and her confidence, and who loves--who loves as one loves for the first time, with a pure and holy devotion, the man whose name she is to bear.” “That man I respect as honor itself. Had it been another, I should already have struck him in the face. But you who accuse me of having lied, are you going to lie to him, to him?” Marsa became livid, and her eyes, hollow as those of a person sick to death, flamed in the black circles which surrounded them. “I have no answer to make to one who has no right to question me,” she said. “But, should I have to pay with my life for the moment of happiness I should feel in placing my hand in the hand of a hero, I would grasp that moment!”