questions that would come pouring down on him, while he would sit there
with Marcsa on his knees, and now and then throw out a casual reply to
his awed, attentive listeners.

But now--how about it now? Go to Marcsa? He? With that face, the face
that had made Julia, the station-guard's wife, cross herself in fright?
Wasn't Marcsa famed throughout the county for her sharp tongue and
haughty ways? She had snubbed the men by the score, laughed at them,
made fools of them all, until she finally fell in love with him.

John Bogdan thrust his fist into his mouth and dug his teeth into the
flesh, until the pain of it at length helped him subdue his sobbing.
Then he buried his head in his hands and tried to think.

Never in his life had anything gone amiss with him. He had always been
liked, at school, in the castle, and even in the barracks. He had gone
through life whistling contentedly, a good-looking alert lad, an
excellent jockey, and a coachman who drove with style and loved his
horses, as his horses loved him. When he deigned to toss a kiss to the
women as he dashed by, he was accustomed to see a flattered smile come
to their faces. Only with Marcsa did it take a little longer. But she
was famous for her beauty far and wide. Even John's master, the lord of
the castle, had patted him on the shoulder almost enviously when Marcsa
and he had become engaged.

"A handsome couple," the pastor had said.

John Bogdan groped again for the little mirror in his pocket and then
sat with drooping body, oppressed by a profound melancholy. That thing
in the glass was to be the bridegroom of the beautiful Marcsa? What did