Marko.

Possibly she ought to run out and beseech Alvan to spare the innocent
youth. She stood up trembling on her legs. She called to Alvan. 'Do
not put blood between us. Oh! I love you more than ever. Why did you
let that horrible man you take for a friend come here? I hate him, and
cannot feel my love of you when I see him. He chills me to the bone.
He made me say the reverse of what was in my heart. But spare poor
Marko! You have no cause for jealousy. You would be above it, if you
had. Do not aim; fire in the air. Do not let me kiss that hand and
think . . .'

She sank to her chair, exclaiming: 'I am a prisoner!' She could not walk
two steps; she was imprisoned by the interdict of the house and the
paralysis of her limbs. Providence decreed that she must abide the
result. Dread Power! To be dragged to her happiness through a river of
blood was indeed dreadful, but the devotional sense of reliance upon
hidden wisdom in the direction of human affairs when it appears
considerate of our wishes, inspirited her to be ready for what Providence
was about to do, mysterious in its beneficence that it was! It is the
dark goddess Fortune to the craven. The craven with desires will offer
up bloody sacrifices to it submissively. The craven, with desires
expecting to be blest, is a zealot of the faith which ascribes the
direction of events to the outer world. Her soul was in full song to
that contriving agency, and she with the paralyzed limbs became
practically active, darting here and there over the room, burning
letters, packing a portable bundle of clothes, in preparation for the
domestic confusion of the morrow when the body of Marko would be driven
to their door, and amid the wailing and the hubbub she would escape
unnoticed to Alvan, Providence-guided! Out of the house would then