Presently as she seemed to weaken before him, he hardened. "You can't have both," he declared with as much sternness as was possible to him, and with a Norman wilfulness which was not strength. "You shall not marry an actor and a Protestant. You shall not marry a man like that— never—never—never. If you do, you will never have a penny of mine, and I will never—"
"Oh, hush—Mother of Heaven, hush!" she cried. "You shall not put a curse on me too."
"What curse?" he burst forth, passion shaking him. "You cursed my mother's baptism. It would be a curse to be told that you would see me no more, that I should be no more part of this home. There has been enough of that curse here. . . . Ah, why—why—" she added with a sudden rush of indignation, "why did you destroy the only thing I had of hers? It was all that was left—her guitar. I loved it so."
All at once, with a cry of pain, she turned and ran to the door—entering on the staircase which led to her room. In the doorway she turned.
"I can't help it. I can't help it, father. I love him—but I love you too," she cried. "I don't want to go—oh, I don't want to go! Why do you—?" her voice choked; she did not finish the sentence; or if she did, he could not hear.
Then she opened the door wide, and disappeared into the darkness of the unlighted stairway, murmuring, "Pity—have pity on me, holy Mother, Vierge Marie!" Then the door closed behind her almost with a bang.
After a moment of stupefied inaction Jean Jacques hurried over and threw open the door she had closed. "Zoe—little Zoe, come back and say good- night," he called. But she did not hear, for, with a burst of crying, she had hurried into her own room and shut and locked the door.
It was a pity, a measureless pity, as Mary the Mother must have seen, if she could see mortal life at all, that Zoe did not hear him. It might have altered the future. As it was, the Devil of Estrangement might well be content with his night's work.