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 man thinks
he has a right to oppress and insult a girl and try to entrap her. You,
and others like you, know nothing of small things, for you are sheltered
by walls and privileges. We are every man's game, while they approach
you as humbly as if you were goddesses.--Besides! It is not only what I
have heard from Karnis, who knows the world and fine folks like you; I
have seen it for myself at Rome, in the senators' houses, where there
were plenty of young lords and great men's daughters--for I have not gone
through life with my eyes shut; with you love is like lukewarm water in a
bath, but it catches us like fire. Sappho of Lesbos flung herself from
the Leucadian rock because Phaon flouted her, and if I could save Marcus
from any calamity by doing the same, I would follow her example.--You
have a lover, too; but your feeling for him, with all the 'intellect'
and 'reflections,' and 'thought' of which you spoke, cannot be the right
one. There is no but or if in my, love at any rate; and yet, for all
that, my heart aches so sorely and beats so wildly, I will wait patiently
with Eusebius and submit to whatever I am bidden.--And in spite of it