"I'm awfully sorry, Mark," she began, in a tone which literally sent a shiver--a real physical shiver--through him, for he was very, very much in love with her. "What on earth is the matter, Niti?" he said, looking at the fair face and downcast eyes which, for the first time since he had asked the eternal question and she had answered it according to his heart's desire, had refused to meet his. "Let's have it out at once. It's a lot better to be shot through the heart than starved to death, you know. I suppose it's something pretty bad, or you wouldn't be looking down at the grass like that," he continued. "Oh, it's--it's--it's a _beastly_ shame, that's what it is, so there!" And as she said this Miss Nitocris Marmion, B.Sc., stamped her foot on the turf and felt inclined to burst out crying, just as a milkmaid might have done. "Which means," said Mark, pulling himself up, as a man about to face a mortal enemy would do, "that the Professor has said 'No.' In other words, he has decided that his learned and lovely daughter shall not, as I suppose he would put it, mate with an animal of a lower order--a mere fighting-man. Well, Miss Marmion----" "Oh, don't; _please_ don't!" she exclaimed, almost piteously, dropping into a big wicker armchair by the verandah and putting her hands over her eyes. He had an awful fear that she was going to cry, and, as the Easterns say, he felt his heart turning to water within him. But her highly trained intellect came to her aid. She swallowed the sob, and looked up at him with clear, dry eyes. "It isn't quite that, Mark," she continued. "You know I wouldn't stand anything like that even from the dear old Dad. Much as I love him, and even, as you know, in some senses almost worship him, it isn't that. It's this theory of heredity of his--this scientific faith--bigotry, I call it, for it is just the same to him as Catholicism was to the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. In fact, I told him the other night that he reminded me of the Spanish grandee whose daughters were convicted of heresy by the Inquisition, and who showed his devotion to the Church by lighting the faggots which burned them with his own hands." "And what did he say to that?" said the sailor, not because he wanted to know, but because there was an awkward pause that needed filling. "I would rather not tell you, Mark, if you don't mind," she said slowly and looking very straightly and steadily at him. "You know--well, I needn't tell you again what I've told you already. You know I care for you, and I always shall, but I cannot--I dare not--disobey my father. I owe all that I ever had to him. He has been father, mother, teacher, friend, companion--everything to me. We are absolutely alone in the world. If I could leave him for anybody, I'd leave him for you, but I won't disobey him and break his heart, as I believe I should, even for you."