As she spoke she had backed slowly across the room, away from her father, as though retreating from a blow. Now she stood against the wall, her arms spread out on either side, the hands clutching the partition.
“In ten minutes I shall show you, my lady,” said her father, between angry, clenched teeth, “the fate of one who dares defy her honorable parent.”
“Do so,” was her astonishing response. “Kill me, break all my honorable bones, my lord. We all must suffer and die!”
“You are too quick to choose your method of punishment, my lady. I have a more subtle means of teaching you the duty of a child to its parent. Do not imagine that I shall kill your body. It is your mind and heart I shall crush.”
“What do you mean, my lord?”
“You will understand, my lady, when your lover is paying with his life for—”
“Oh no, no, no, no!” she cried, wildly, her hands groping through blinding emotion as though she would push away from her some horror too awful for utterance. “No, no, no!”
She fell down at her father’s feet, burying her face in the folds of his hakama, her hands clutched about it frantically. “Oh, my father—no, no, no!”
She could say no more.
“You will obey my commands?” inquired the father, bending over her.