“I tell you that marriage has nothing to do with all this!” He began walking again, to keep his temper hot, for he was dimly conscious that he was getting the worst of the encounter, and that her arguments were good.

“And I tell you that a marriage that has nothing to do with love, and with honour, and with trust, is no marriage at all!” answered the girl.  “Say what you please of customs, and traditions, and of station, and all that!  God never meant that an innocent girl should be bought and sold like a slave, or a horse, for a name, nor for money, nor for any imaginary advantage to herself or to her father!  I know what our privilege is, that the patricians may marry us and not lose their rank.  I would rather keep my own, and marry a glass-worker, even if I were to be sold!  Do you know what your money would buy for me in Venice?  The privilege of being despised and slighted by patricians and great ladies.  You know as well as I that it would all end there, in spite of all you may give.  They want your money, you want their name, because you are rich and you have always been taught to think that the chief use of money is to rise in the world.”

“Will you teach me what I am to think?” asked old Beroviero, amazed by her sudden flow of words.

“Yes,” she answered, before he could say more.  “I will teach you what you should think, what you should have always thought—­a man as brave and upright and honest in everything as you are!  You should think, you should know, that your daughter has a right to live, a right to be free, and a right to love, like every living creature God ever made!”

“This is the most abominable rebellion!” retorted Beroviero.  “I cannot imagine where you learned—­”

“Rebellion?” she cried, interrupting him in ringing tones.  “Yes, it is rank rebellion, sedition and revolt against slavery, for life and love and freedom!  You wonder where I have learned to turn and face this oppression of the world, instead of yielding to it, one more unhappy woman among the thousands that are bought and sold into wifehood every year!  I have learned nothing, my heart needed no teaching for that!  It is enough that I love an honest man truly—­I know that it is wrong to promise my faith to another, and that it is a worse wrong in you to try to get that promise from me by force.  A vow that could be nothing but a solemn lie!  Would the ring on my finger be a charm to make me forget?  Would the priest’s words and blessing be a spell to root out of my heart what is the best part of my life?  Better go to a nunnery, and weep for the truth, than to hope for peace in such a lie as that—­better a thousand, thousand times!”

She had risen now, and was almost eloquent, facing her father with flashing eyes.