"No! I will not have him or anyone else! I will not marry!"
"Fool!" he retorted brutally. "You will marry because you need a roof over your head, food and dress, and someone to look after you. . . . I don't intend to ruin myself completely for your sake . . . and when I am gone, what then?"
"I have my dower; I will get along without the aid of Grzesikiewicz or anyone like him. Aha, so your object in wanting to marry me is simply to provide for my support!" She regarded him defiantly.
"And what of it? For what else do women marry?" "They marry for love and marry those whom they love."
"You're a fool, I tell you once again," he shouted vehemently, helping himself to another portion of chicken. "Love is nothing but this sauce, you can eat the chicken just as well without it; sauce is nothing but an invention, a freak and a modern fad!"
"No self-respecting woman sells herself to the first man that comes along merely because he is capable of supporting her!"
"You're a fool. They all do it, they all sell themselves. Love is childish prattle and nonsense. Don't irritate me."
"It is not a question of irritating you, father, or whether love is nonsense or not; it is a question of my future which you dispose of as though it belonged to you. Already at the time that Zielenkiewicz proposed to me. I told you that I do not intend to marry at all."
"Zielenkiewicz is merely Zielenkiewicz, but Grzesikiewicz is a very lord, and what I call a man! He is kind-hearted, wise for did he not graduate from the academy at Dublany and as strong as a bull. A fellow who can master the wildest horse and who, when he struck a peasant in the face the other day, knocked out six of his teeth with one blow such a fellow is not good enough for you! I swear he is ideal, the highest of all ideals!"
"Yes, your ideal is an incomparable one; he'd make a good prize-fighter."