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Updated: May 10, 2025
It was this constant hope that the day would come when justice would be meted out to Menko's treachery. The letters proved conclusively that Menko had been Marsa's lover; but they proved, at the same time, that Michel had taken advantage of her innocence and ignorance, and lied outrageously in representing himself as free, when he was already bound to another woman.
The Prince gradually wrought himself into a highly nervous condition, missing Varhely, uneasy at his prolonged absence, and never succeeding in driving away Marsa's haunting image. He grew to hate his solitary home and his books. "I shall not want any breakfast," he said one morning to his valet; and, going out, he descended the Champs-Elysees on foot.
A quick thought illumined Michel's brain like a flash of electricity: "Ah! this is Marsa's answer!" He had just time to mutter, with raging irony: "I was right, she was waiting for me!" Then, before the onslaught of the dogs, he recoiled, clasping his hands upon his breast and boldly thrusting out his elbows to ward off their ferocious attacks.
She examined the signature, peering through her eyeglass, close to the canvas. "Yes, I knew it was. Michel Zichy!" This name of "Michel!" suddenly pronounced, sped like an arrow through Marsa's heart. She closed her eyes as if to shut out some hateful vision, and abruptly quitted the Baroness, who proceeded to analyze Zichy's portrait as she did the pictures in the salon on varnishing day.
She was coming toward Zilah; in a moment, he would be able to touch her, if he wished, through the leaves! Even Vogotzine held his breath. Zilah eagerly questioned Marsa's face, as if to read thereon a secret, to decipher a name Menko's or his own.
But I am dying of the love which I can not conquer. Will you kiss me as a token that you have pardoned me?" For the first time, perhaps, Marsa's lips, trembling with emotion, then touched the Prince's forehead. But, before kissing him, her eyes had sought those of her mother, who bowed her head in assent. "And you," murmured the dying Prince, "will you forgive me, Tisza?"
And while the Prince, in the carriage which bore him away, read the letters in which Marsa spoke of her love for another, and that other the man whom he called "my child;" while he paused in this agonizing reading to ask himself if it were true, if such a sudden annihilation of his happiness were possible, if so many misfortunes could happen in such a few hours; while he watched the houses and trees revolve slowly by him, and feared that he was going mad Marsa's servants ate the remnants of the lunch, and drank what was left of the champagne to the health of the Prince and Princess Zilah.
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.
The General shrugged his shoulders, bent over, took Marsa's delicate hand in his, and kissed it as he would have kissed that of a queen. Left alone, Marsa lay there motionless for more than an hour. Then she started suddenly, hearing the clock strike eleven, and rose at once. The domestics had closed the house.
He must have debarked before reaching Paris, and have come to Maisons-Lafitte in haste. Marsa's only thought, in the first moment of anger, was to refuse to see him. "I can not," she thought, "I will not!" Then suddenly her mind changed. It was braver and more worthy of her to meet the danger face to face.
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