"Love! So talk you. You see a girl beautiful, sweet, and innocent. Your heart, greedy and covetous, wants her as it has wanted, doubtless, many others. For yourself only you seek her. And what is it you ask then! That she should give up for you her father, mother, home, her own faith, her own people, her own country,—the poor little one!—for a cold, cheerless land among strangers, alone in the sorrows and pains that to all women come. Love! In God's name, what know you of love?"
"No man can love her better."
"What say you? How, then, do I love her? I who carried her—mijn witte lammetje—in these arms before yet she could say to me, 'Fader'!" His wrath had been steadily growing, in spite of the mist in his eyes and the tenderness in his voice; and suddenly striking the desk a ponderous blow with his closed hand, he said with an unmistakable passion, "My daughter you shall not have. God in heaven to himself take her ere such sorrow come to her and me!"
"Sir, you are very uncivil; but I am thankful to know so much of your mind. And, to be plain with you, I am determined to marry your daughter if I can compass the matter in any way. It is now, then, open war between us; and so, sir, your servant."
"Stay. To me listen. Not one guilder will I give to my daughter, if"—
"To the devil with your guilders! Dirty money made in dirty traffic"—
"You lie!"
"Sir, you take an infamous advantage. You know, that, being Katherine's father, I will not challenge you."