"You need not repulse me so harshly, I should have gone in the moment when it became clear to me that the one thing I sought here--my father's heart--was denied me. I have never known a parent's love. My mother was estranged from me, of my father I only knew that he lived on this side the Atlantic, and had cast me off because he hated my mother. I came against my will, because I neither knew nor loved you. I only feared you. I came because my uncle said that you were lonely and embittered, and in spite of your wealth had no happiness in life; that you needed love, and that I alone could give it to you. By those means he forced me to follow him, in spite of my opposition, and by those means has he ever prevented me when I begged to return home. But now he will not wish to detain me, and if he did, I would tear myself away. Keep your wealth, father, that which you think has brought me to you. It has brought no blessing to you; I knew it long ago, and hear it again in your words. If you were poor and desolate I would try to love you, now I cannot. I will leave you within the hour!"
The unmeasured violence with which these words were spoken, or rather with which they rushed from Frida's lips had something terrible in it, but it also betrayed something which produced a more powerful effect than all the prayers and petitions could have done--the resemblance between the father and the daughter.
In the ordinary course of life the resemblance between the girl of sixteen and the already grey-haired man might have disappeared, or only have been remarkable occasionally; here, in the moment of highest excitement, it found such overwhelming, such convincing expression, that every doubt vanished on the spot.
Sandow must have seen it whether he would or not. Those were his eyes, which flamed before him, that was his voice which rang in his ears, that was his own dark, unbending obstinacy which now turned against himself. Trait by trait he saw himself reproduced in his daughter. The voice of blood and nature spoke so loud and convincingly that even the long treasured illusion of the father began to yield.
Frida turned to her uncle.
"In an hour I shall be ready to start! Forgive me, Uncle Gustave, that I have so badly carried out all your teaching, that I have rendered useless all your self-sacrifice, but I cannot do otherwise!"
She threw herself wildly on his breast, but only for a moment, then she tore herself away, fled past her father, and rushed like a hunted thing through the garden towards the house.
As Sandow saw his daughter in his brother's arms, he made a movement as if to tear her away, but his hand fell powerless by his side, and he sank as if crushed upon a seat, and buried his face in his hands.
Gustave, on his side, made no attempt to detain his niece. He stood quietly there with folded arms and watched his brother. At last he asked--
"Do you believe it now?"