a brute--what was it I said? Do sit down."

He has taken her in his arms. In the days that are gone he has been
very fond, and a little afraid of his gipsy cousin. He is afraid
still--horribly afraid, if the truth must be told, now that his
momentary anger is gone.

All the scorn, all the defiance has died out of her voice when she
speaks again. The great, solemn eyes transfix him with a look he
cannot meet.

"_Was to have been_," she repeats, in a sort of whisper; "was to
have been. Victor, does that mean it never _is_ to be?"

He turns away, shame, remorse, fear in his averted face. He holds the
back of the chair with one hand, she clings to the other as though it
held her last hope in life.

"Take time," she says, in the same slow, whispering way. "I can wait.
I have waited so long, what does a few minutes more matter now? But
think well before you speak--there is more at stake than you know of.
My whole future life hangs on your words. A woman's life. Have you
ever thought what that implies? 'Was to have been,' you said. Does
that mean it never is to be?"

Still no reply. He holds the back of the chair, his face averted, a
criminal before his judge.

"And while you think," she goes on, in that slow, sweet voice, "let me
recall the past. Do you remember, Victor, the day when I and Juan came