Yanni sank down again in his chair.
"Oh, Mitsos," he said, "poor Mitsos! God forgive us all."
Mitsos glanced at him, frowning.
"'Poor Mitsos!'" he cried; "why do you say 'poor Mitsos'? Do you think I am going to do this?"
"You are not going to do it?"
"No!" shouted Mitsos. "It is not I who choose. There is no choice. I cannot!"
"But the clan, the oath to obey—"
"There are bigger things than clans or oaths. To hell with my oath, to hell with the clan," cried Mitsos.
Yanni sat silent, and Mitsos suddenly flared up again.
"How dare you sit there," he cried, "and let your silence blame me? You, whom I rescued from the house of Mehemet; who but for me would have been rotting in the ground, or worse than that; you, whom I saved when a cross-legged Turk had you down on the ground—"