“You are happy indeed if you can shut your eyes at the dictates of your heart!” retorted Gorgo, but she sighed.  “Happy are they and much to be envied who can compel their judgment to silence when it is grief to hear its voice.  I—­I who have been taught to think, cannot abandon my judgment; it builds up a barrier between me and the happiness that beckons me.  And yet, so long as truth remains the highest aim of man, I will bless the faculty of seeking it with all the powers of my mind.  My betrothed husband, like yours, is a Christian; and I would I could accept his creed as unflinchingly as you; but it is not in my nature to leap into a pool when I know that it is full of currents and whirlpools.  —­However, the present question has to do with you and not with me.  Marcus, no doubt, will be happy to have won you; but if he does not succeed in gaining his mother’s consent he will not continue happy you may rely upon it.  I know these Christians! they cannot conceive of any possible joy in married life without their parents’ blessing, and if Marcus defies his mother he will torture his conscience and lead a death-in-life, as though he were under some heavy load of guilt.”

“For all that, and all that,” Dada insisted, “he can no more be happy without me than I can without him.  I have never in my life paid court to any one, but I have always met with kindness.  Why then should I not be able to win his mother’s heart?  I will wager anything and everything that she will take kindly to me, for, after all, she must be glad when she sees her son happy.  Eusebius will speak for us and she will give its her blessing!  But if it is not to be, if I may never be his wife honestly and in the face of the world, still I will not give him up, nor he me.  He may deal with me as he will—­as if he were my god and I were his slave!”

“But, my poor child, do you know nothing of womanly honor and womanly dignity?” cried Gorgo clasping her hands.  “You complain of the lot of a singing-girl, and the cruel prejudices of the world—­and what are you saying?  Let me have my way, you would say, or I scorn your morality?”

“Scorn!” exclaimed Dada firing up.  “Do you say I scorn morality?  No, indeed no.  I am an insignificant little person; there is nothing proud or great about me, and as I know it full well I am quite humble; in all my life I never dared to think of scorn, even of a child.  But here, in my heart, something was awoke to life—­through Marcus, only through him —­something that makes me strong; and when I see custom and tradition in league against me because I am a singer, when they combine to keep me out of what I have a right to have—­well, within these few hours I have found the spirit to defend myself, to the death if need be!  What you call womanly honor I have been taught to hold as sacred as you yourself, and I have kept it as untainted as any girl living.  Not that I meant to do anything grand, but you have no idea of what it is when every