The answer would have sent her away in dudgeon, under any other circumstances, but her pride could not stand in the way of this very pressing duty.
"A boon," she said, choking back her resentment.
"A boon! Thou wouldst ask a boon of me! Nay, I will not promise, for it may be thou comest to ask thy freedom, and that I will not grant for spleen."
Still she curbed herself. "Nay, O Prince; I am come to ask naught of thee which—a wife—may not justly ask of—her—lord."
He left the curtain and came close to her. "Had the words come smoothly over thy lips, they would have meant any wife—any husband. But thy very faltering names thee and me. What is the boon that thou mayest justly ask of me?"
"My father—."
"Hold! There, too, I make a restriction. Already have I suffered thy father sufficiently."
Tears leaped into her insulted eyes, and in the bright light, shining from a lamp above her head, her emotion was very apparent.
"Thou hast begun well in thy siege of my heart, Rameses," she said. "I am like to love thee, if thou dost woo me with affronts!"
"I am as like to win thee with rough words as I am with soft speeches. I had thought thee above pretense, Masanath."