She dropped Gustav’s hands, and her face was blanched in a transport of pain.
“Oh, father, blame me not. Your voice has never yet been harsh to me. I am young. Show me some pity. Think what it is, on the threshold of life, to be asked to relinquish life’s best happiness. Plead with me—you,” she urged Gustav, her brows drawn in one line of repressed anguish.
“Sir, is there any sacrifice you will be satisfied with as a proof that for her sake I must utterly renounce my nationality? If I adopt Greece as my home, and your name instead of mine? Inarime is my life, my world, my future,” cried Gustav.
“You are a Turk. You cannot undo or alter that fact.”
“Father, I cannot give him up,” said Inarime.
“Then you are dead to me. Choose between us, my child. Marry him, and go hence without a father. Drop your past, and take up your future alone.”
“Oh, sir, this is a cruel choice for so tender a daughter. I cannot allow it,” Gustav protested.
“It is my decision. Choose at once, Inarime.”
“Leave you, father, or leave—him?” she said, slowly, dazed with the stress of the moment.
She looked from one to the other, and then with a little sob flung out her arms towards her father, her eyes fastened in piteous entreaty on Gustav’s.