"Yes," sobbed the girl. "Geisha street! Refuge of the forsaken! Oh, love exalts, as we do our parents. It does not demean. So, there is no love, no love! No matter what I am, however low, no matter what he is, however high, if he loved me he would ask my parents for leave to marry me—even if he only meant to take me. And I thought he loved me! Do you remember how, only a little while ago, I wished him only to know well that he loved me! Alas, he knows now that I love him, but he has told me odiously, odiously, that he does not love me! Yes, Isonna, he shall have me. Then I will die."
THE MAKING OF A GODDESS
XVI
THE MAKING OF A GODDESS
So she said the next day, not now with the aplomb of a lady, but as a servant:—
"Lord, there is a reason why you cannot—even—" she choked in her throat—"take me. Do you not know it?"
"Do not call me lord," he said, "as if you were a servant and I your master."
"It is right that I should do so, lord."
"I won't have it," he laughed.