"Some day, Andor, I will marry you if God wills," she said simply.
"Oh! But of course He will!" he rejoined airily, "and we will be married in the spring—or the early summer when the maize is just beginning to ripen . . . and we'll rent the mill from Pali bácsi—shall we, Elsa?"
"If you like, Andor."
"If I like!" he exclaimed. "If I like! The dear God love me, but I think that if I stay here much longer I shall go off my head. . . . Elsa, you don't know how much I love you and what I would not do for your sake. . . . I feel a different man even for the joy of sitting here and talking to you and no one having the right to interfere. . . . And I would make you happy, Elsa, that I swear by the living God. I would make you happy and I would work to keep you in comfort all the days of my life. You shall be just as fine as Erös Béla would have made you—and besides that, there would be a smile on your sweet face at every hour of the day . . . your hands would be as white as those of my lady the Countess herself, for I would have a servant to wait on you. And your father would come and live with us and we would make him happy and comfortable too, and your mother . . . well! your mother would be happy too, and therefore not quite so cantankerous as she sometimes is."
To Andor there was nothing ahead but a life full of sunshine. He never looked back on the past few days and on the burden of sin which they bore. Béla had been a brute of the most coarse and abominable type; by his monstrous conduct on the eve of his wedding day he had walked to his death—of his own accord. Andor had not sent him. Oh! he was quite, quite sure that he had not sent Béla to his death. He had merely forborn to warn him—and surely there could be no sin in that.
He might have told Béla that Leopold Hirsch—half mad with jealousy—was outside on the watch with a hunting-knife in his pocket and murder in his soul. Andor might have told Béla this and he had remained silent. Was that a sin? considering what a brute the man was, how his action that night was a deadly insult put upon Elsa, and how he would in the future have bullied and browbeaten Elsa and made her life a misery—a veritable hell upon earth.
Andor had thought the problem out; he had weighed it in his mind and he was satisfied that he had not really committed a sin. Of course he ought before now to have laid the whole case before Pater Bonifácius, and the Pater would have told him just what God's view would be of the whole affair.
The fact that Andor had not thought of going to confession showed that he was not quite sure what God—as represented by Pater Bonifácius—would think of it all; but he meant to go by and by and conclude a permanent and fulsome peace treaty with his conscience.
In the meanwhile, even though the burden of remorse should at times in the future weigh upon his soul and perhaps spoil a little of his happiness, well! he would have to put up with it, and that was all!—Elsa was happy—one sight of her radiant little face was enough for any fool to see that an infinite sense of relief had descended into her soul. Elsa was happy—freed from the brute who would have made her wretched for the rest of her life; and surely the good God, who could read the secret motives which lay in a fellow's heart, would not be hard on Andor for what he had done—or left undone—for Elsa's sake.