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."