“But I am going,” said Clementina, in a tone in which, in all his experience, he had never known her to utter a fiat that was unfulfilled. As she spoke she rose from her place and took her father’s hand, urging him insistently to go. Seeing that they were being observed by those about them, Rhodes yielded unwillingly, and when they were without in the vestibule of the theatre, she spoke again, in the same tone:
“I am going to see that lady,” she said. “If you do not take me, I will go without you.”
He was so accustomed to seeing her perform resolutely whatever she undertook—this strange, determined child of his—that he felt that he could not thwart her will, and so he began, in a helpless, entreating fashion, to try to alter it.
“Oh, Clementina, please don’t go!” he said. “Come home with me—please do! I’ll do anything you want if you’ll only come home with me now.”
“Not until I have seen that lady,” said the child, an expression of indomitable purpose making her little face look strangely old.
Poor Clem was almost in tears. He felt that he had not the power to resist her, and he felt, at the same time, that if she carried her point his case was lost with the Tarara. He had hoped to win her consent to marry him, and he had meant to conceal the child’s existence until the marriage should be over, and then to confess it, throwing himself upon her mercy, and offering to put the child in some school or asylum where she should be kindly treated and yet be out of the way.
But if Clementina persisted, now, all would be lost. He resolved upon a subterfuge and a lie. The child’s purpose must be frustrated at all costs.
“If you will come with me now,” he said, “I will take you to see her to-morrow. Come, Clementina, please.”
“To-morrow will not do,” the child began, in that same tone of resolution, but at this instant a boy came up to them, and delivered a message to Clem. This message was a summons to him to come at once to the Tarara’s room, and to bring the child.
With a last effort at resistance he was beginning to frame an excuse, when, in the very midst of his speech, Clementina said, decisively, speaking to the boy: