Even after I had finished, he sat regarding me contemplatively without speaking. Meanwhile my fingers twitched; my heart thumped at a telltale speed; I felt like a prisoner arraigned before the bar. But he, the judge, appeared unaware of my agitation, and would not break my suspense until he had fully decided upon his verdict.
Yet his first words were commonplace enough.
"I had never expected anything at all like this," he said, in low sad tones. "Nothing like this has ever been known among our people. We Ibandru have seen little of strangers; none of our young people have ever taken mates outside the tribe. And so your confession comes as a shock."
"It should not come as a shock," was all I could mumble in reply.
"Were I as other fathers," continued the old man, suavely, "I might rise up and order you expelled from our land. Or I might grow angry and shout, and forbid you to see my daughter again. Or I might be crafty, and ask you to engage in feats of prowess with the young men of the town—and so might prove your unworthiness. Or I might send your request to the tribal council, which would decide against you. But I shall do none of these things. Once I too was young, and once I too—" here his voice faltered, and his eyes grew soft with reminiscence—"once I too knew what it was to love. So I shall try not to be too harsh, my friend. But you ask that which I fear is impossible. For your sake, I am sorry that it is impossible. But it is my duty to show you why."
During this speech my heart had sunk until it seemed dead and cold within me. It was as if a world had been shattered before my eyes; as if in the echoes of my own thoughts I heard that fateful word, "Impossible, impossible, impossible!"
"There are so many things to consider, so many things you cannot even know," Abthar proceeded, still stroking his beard meditatively, while my restless fingers toyed with the clods of earth, and my eyes followed absently the wanderings of an ant lost amid those mountainous masses. "But let me explain as well as I can. I shall try to talk to you as a friend, and forget for the time that I am Yasma's father. I shall say nothing of my hopes for her, and how I always thought to see her happy with some sturdy young tribesman, with my grandchildren upon her knee. I shall say nothing of the years that are past, and how I have tried to do my best for her, a motherless child; how sometimes I blundered and sometimes misunderstood, and was more anxious about her and more blest by her than you or she will ever know. Let that all be forgotten. What concerns us now is that you are proposing to make both her and yourself more unhappy than any outcast."
"Unhappy!" I exclaimed, with an unconscious gesture to the blue skies to witness how I was misjudged. "Unhappy! May the lightning strike me down if I don't want to make her happier than a queen!"
"So you say," replied the old man, with just the hint of a cynical smile, "and so you no doubt believe. We all set out in life to make ourselves and others happy—and how many of us succeed? Just now, Yasma's blackest enemy could not do her greater mischief."
"Oh, don't say that!" I protested, clenching my fists with a show of anger. "Have you so far misunderstood me? Do you believe that I—that I—"