“It is.”
“Will nothing—nothing I can say shake you?”
“Nothing.”
“You are a second Agamemnon,” Gustav cried, and turned away with weary, angry eyes and white lips.
Pericles opened his mouth to call him back, shut it, drove down the unsaid words with a heavy sigh, and walked slowly towards his brother’s house.
Constantine greeted him in the hall with an emphatic look, pointed to the inner room and shrugged his shoulders.
“She is in there, pacing for all the world like a ravenous tiger. Women are cats. They spring and tread delicately, with glittering, rageful eyes, and make you listen, in spite of yourself, for the ominous hiss and spit, or the soft caressing purr. I would not marry that young woman for her weight in gold. That reminds me. Oïdas is bothering me about the engagement. He complains that it is indefinite, that Inarime has stayed too long at that confounded Embassy, and that you keep him on tenter-hooks. It is all over Athens about young Ehrenstein. The senseless whelp! Oïdas is frantic, insists he has been injuriously trifled with; in short, nothing but an immediate marriage will satisfy him. He is the snarling dog that shows his teeth upon provocation, and is perhaps more dangerous, if not more discomposing, than the spitting cat.”
“It is all right, Constantine. Oïdas is correct in his statement that he has been somewhat unfairly dealt with, in so far as his answer has been unduly delayed. This accident of Ehrenstein’s—the Fates confound him and the Furies overtake him!—teaches me that the conclusion of the bargain must be speedily arrived at. I cannot have my daughter’s name dubiously upon the lips of chattering fools. Oïdas will be apprised this afternoon of my decision.”
He swung into the other room, and a face of piercing eagerness and demand met his!
“Inarime, you must be ready to marry Kyrios Oïdas at once,” he began, without any thoughtful preliminaries.