“You wish to remain here?” he interrogated.
“I think I do,” she breathed through her teeth reluctantly. “To return to Tenos would mean so much for me. It was good of you, father, to give me this change.”
“Well, well,” Selaka interposed, with a disappointed air. “Happily the emotions of your strange sex are ever ready to come to your aid. Sorrow is not incurable, because you answer so readily to the spur of distraction. Perhaps you will bend as compliantly to the sound of wedding-bells.”
“No, I will not,” she retorted, harshly.
“If I ask it, Inarime?” he bent forward.
“It would not be fair. You have the right to dispose of me, I know, but I ought not to be tried beyond my strength.”
“Do not speak as if it were possible I should be other than your best friend, with your interests exclusively my own,” protested Selaka, affectionately. “But it is the duty of the old to remember the future for the young. Marriage is the natural termination of a girl’s irresponsible existence. I, as your guardian, am bound to find you a suitable mate. You mentioned just now that here at Athens you had forgotten that you were unhappy. That struck me as a singularly pregnant observation—it felicitously summed up your sex. What then can there be objectionable in my proposal to settle you permanently at Athens?”
He awaited her reply as if he expected compliance.
“I spoke of change preluding a return to the old life. It pleased me to feel that I had pushed it away from me for awhile, that I was aloof from it, beholding entirely new scenes and hearing foreign voices. That change I know I wanted to keep me from a merely whimpering discontent. I wish to be strong, father, and hate to succumb to weakness.”
“Prove your wish for strength by casting from you sentimental chains. Your objection is purely sentimental. Remember the lesson of the ancients. We perceive the ideal, and hasten to make our best compromise with the actual. Love is the unattainable draught. We are sometimes permitted to bring our lips within measurable distance from the rim of the bowl, and then it is withdrawn. Some of us are given one sip of the nectar and must go thirsty ever afterwards. We live the life of the flesh, which is common and crude enough, and nourish our starved spirit upon memory. That is the lesson of experience, but we need not, for that, feel ourselves curtained off from cheerfulness and contented labour.”