"My dear father," she said entreatingly, "please do not tell me that you really mean--that you really think you would like to--that you would consider--this man--" He turned on her a suddenly direct, confessing look. "Aimée, I have _arranged_ this matter." He added heavily, "To-night. That is what I came to tell you." In the silence that settled upon them he finally ceased his effort to ignore her shocked dismay. He abandoned his airy pretense that the affair could possibly evoke her enthusiasm. He sucked at his cigarette like a rather sullen little boy. "I have always indulged you, Aimée," he said at last, without looking round at her. "I hope you are not going to make me infernally sorry." "I think you are m-making me inf-fernally sorry," said an unsteady little voice. He looked about. His daughter was sitting very still upon the gilded sofa beneath the banner of Mahomet; as he regarded her two great tears formed in her dark eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks. With a sound of impatience he jumped to his feet and began to pace up and down the room. This, he pointed out heatedly, to her, was what a man got who indulged his daughter. This is what came of French and English governesses and modern ideas.... After all he had done--more than any other father! To sit and weep! Weep--at such a marriage! What did she expect of life? Was she not as other women? Did she never look ahead? Had she no pride, no ambition--no hopes? Did she wish never to marry, then, to become an _old mees_ like her English companion? "I am but eighteen," she said quiveringly. "Oh, my father, do not give me to this unknown--" "Unknown--unknown! Do I not know him?" "But you promised--" Angrily he gestured with his cigarette. "Do I know what is good for you or do I not? Have I your interest at heart--tell me! Am I a savage, a dolt--" "But you do not know what it is to be unhappy. I beg of you, my father,--I should die with such a life before me, with such a man for my husband. I am too French, too like my mother--" "Ah, your mother!... Too French, are you?... But what would you have in France?" he demanded with the bursting appearance of a man making every effort to restrain himself within unreasonable bounds. "Would not your parents there arrange your marriage? You might see the fiancé," he caught the words out of her mouth, "but only for a time or two--after the arrangements--and what is that? What more would you know than what your father knows? Are you a thing to be exhibited--given to a man to gaze at and appraise? I tell you, no.... You are my daughter. You bear my name. And when you marry you marry in the sanctity of the custom of your father--and you go to your husband's house as his mother went to his father." Timidly she protested, "But my mother--and you--" "Do not speak of your mother! If she were here she would counsel gratitude and obedience." He turned his back on her. "This is what comes," he muttered, "of this modernity, this education...."