uy for me in Venice? The
privilege of being despised and slighted by patricians and great ladies.
You know as well as I that it would all end there, in spite of all you
may give. They want your money, you want their name, because you are
rich and you have always been taught to think that the chief use of
money is to rise in the world."

"Will you teach me what I am to think?" asked old Beroviero, amazed by
her sudden flow of words.

"Yes," she answered, before he could say more. "I will teach you what
you should think, what you should have always thought--a man as brave
and upright and honest in everything as you are! You should think, you
should know, that your daughter has a right to live, a right to be free,
and a right to love, like every living creature God ever made!"

"This is the most abominable rebellion!" retorted Beroviero. "I cannot
imagine where you learned--"

"Rebellion?" she cried, interrupting him in ringing tones. "Yes, it is
rank rebellion, sedition and revolt against slavery, for life and love
and freedom! You wonder where I have learned to turn and face this
oppression of the world, instead of yielding to it, one more unhappy
woman among the thousands that are bought and sold into wifehood every
year! I have learned nothing, my heart needed no teaching for that! It
is enough that I love an honest man truly--I know that it is wrong to
promise my faith to another, and that it is a worse wrong in you to try
to get that promise from me by force. A vow that could be nothing but a
solemn lie! Would the ring on my finger be a charm to make me forget?
Would the priest's words and blessing be a spell to root out of my heart
what is the best part of my life? Better go to a nunnery, and weep for
the truth, than to hope for peace in such a lie as that--better a
thousand, thousand times!"

She had risen now, and was almost eloquent, facing her father with
flashing eyes.

"Oh, you have always been kind to me, good to me, dear to me," she went
on quickly. "It is only in this that you will not understand. Would it
not hurt you a little to feel that you had sent me to a sort of living
death from which I could never come back to life? That I was imprisoned
for ever among people who looked down upon me and only tolerated me for
my fortune's sake? Yet that would be the very least part of it all! I
could bear all that, if it were for any good. But to become the
creature, the possession, the plaything of a man I d