"What is it you wish that I should do?" she said. "Die? yes, I would willingly, gladly die for you, interposing my breast between you and a bullet. Ah! I swear to you, I should be thankful to die like one of those who bore your name. But, there is no fighting now, and I can not shed my blood for you. I will sacrifice my life in another manner, obscurely, in the shadows of a cloister. I shall have had neither lover nor husband, I shall be nothing, a recluse, a prisoner. It will be well! yes, for me, the prison, the cell, death in a life slowly dragged out! Ah! I deserve that punishment, and I wish my sentence to come from you; I wish you to tell me that I am free to disappear, and that you order me to do so--but, at the same time, tell me, oh, tell me, that you have forgiven me!" "I!" said Andras. In Marsa's eyes was a sort of wild excitement, a longing for sacrifice, a thirst for martyrdom. "Do I understand that you wish to enter a convent?" asked Andras, slowly. "Yes, the strictest and gloomiest. And into that tomb I shall carry, with your condemnation and farewell, the bitter regret of my love, the weight of my remorse!" The convent! The thought of such a fate for the woman he loved filled Andras Zilah with horror. He imagined the terrible scene of Marsa's separation from the world; he could hear the voice of the officiating bishop casting the cruel words upon the living, like earth upon the dead; he could almost see the gleam of the scissors as they cut through her beautiful dark hair. Kneeling before him, her eyes wet with tears, Marsa was as lovely in her sorrow as a Mater Dolorosa. All his love surged up in his heart, and a wild temptation assailed him to keep her beauty, and dispute with the convent this penitent absolved by remorse. She knelt there repentant, weeping, wringing her hands, asking nothing but pardon--a word, a single word of pity--and the permission to bury herself forever from the world. "So," he said, abruptly, "the convent cell, the prison, does not terrify you?" "Nothing terrifies me except your contempt." "You would live far from Paris, far from the world, far from everything?" "In a kennel of dogs, under the lash of a slavedriver; breaking stones, begging my bread, if you said to me: 'Do that, it is atonement!'" "Well!" cried Andras, passionately, his lips trembling, his blood surging through his veins. "Live buried in our Hungary, forgetting, forgotten, hidden, unknown, away from all, away from Paris, away from the noise of the world, in a life with me, which will be a new life! Will you?" She looked at him with staring, terrified eyes, believing his words to be some cruel jest. "Will you?" he said again, raising her from the floor, and straining her to his breast, his burning lips seeking the icy ones of the Tzigana. "Answer me, Marsa. Will you?" Like a sigh, the word fell on the air: "Yes." CHAPTER XXXIV A NEW LIFE