"Oh, that is it," rejoined Count Hamilcar, and the cigar trembled a little in his hand, "then I too shall have to be plain. As I have always taken an interest in you, I have frequently been called upon to help you out of all the difficulties in which your recklessness, or, to express myself less plainly, your interesting disposition has involved you. Then since you know all that I know of you, you will understand that for the happiness of my daughter I have not counted on you in any respect." Now Boris found his eloquence again, found again all the big words that he had got ready yesterday in the maple-avenue, and he had to rise from his chair to say them. "I know all that you have done for me, uncle. I know my failings, too. But that is not what decides in this case. Billy's love for me is undeserved good fortune. Such happiness is always undeserved. But not to stretch out my hands toward it would be suicide for me, yes sheer suicide." "My dear boy," interrupted the count, "the use of the word suicide as a rhetorical device should be urgently discouraged, in the interests of good taste." Boris grew impassioned, and his voice rose to a high key: "I care nothing for rhetorical devices or good taste. The matter at issue is my destiny, but that would of course be immaterial, immaterial to you. But Billy is concerned, Billy gives me my right, and even if I am reckless and unworthy and a bad match and unattractive, Billy's love is my right." He had finished and re-seated himself in his chair. That had relieved him. The count gently stroked his white nose and retorted, "The right to fall in love with my daughter I cannot deny you, nor the right to ask me for the hand of my daughter, but what you just said sounded rather as if you were asking me in Billy's name for your own hand." "I wanted to be open and loyal toward you," replied Boris. "Oh, did you?" remarked the count. "You call it loyal, as a guest in my house, to 'come to an agreement,' as you call it, behind my back, with my seventeen-year-old daughter." "It was perhaps not correct," said Boris wearily and with a superior air, "but good gracious, when anything so powerful takes possession here in the heart and here in the head, we simply give it utterance." Sharply and angrily the count rejoined, "A decent man keeps to himself nine-tenths of what passes through his head and heart." "You wish to insult me, uncle," and Boris smiled his handsome melancholy smile, "very well, very well. Perhaps we Poles cannot keep our heads and hearts as well in check as you Germans; but that does not prevent us from being decent."