ette, Maryan
inquired:

"But if--perchance--I should not agree to enter that school?"

Darvid answered immediately:

"In that case you will remain here, but without means of
independent existence. You will be free to live under my roof,
and appear at the parental table; but you will not receive a
personal income of any kind. At the same time, I will publish in
the newspapers that I shall not pay your debts hereafter. What I
have said, I will do. Take your choice."

That he would do what he had said any man who saw him then might
feel certain.

The bloom on Maryan's cheeks took on a brick color; his eyes
filled with steel sparks.

"The system of taking fortresses through famine," said he, in an
undertone; and, then with head inclined somewhat, and eyes fixed
on the carpet, he said:

"I am astonished. I thought, father, that in spite of my seeing
you rarely, I knew you well; now I find that I did not know you
at all. I admired in you that power of thought which was able to
strike from you the bonds of every prejudice; now, I have
convinced myself that your ideas are not only patriarchal, but
despotic. This is a deception which pains. I wonder myself, even,
that this affects me so powerfully; but in falling from heights
one must always hurt, even the point of the nose. This is one
lesson more not to climb heights. I have in me a cursed
imagination which leads me astray. One more mirage has vanished;
one more painted pot has lost its colors. What is to be done?"

He said this in a low voice, biting his lower lip at times; he
was pained in reality, and deeply. After a while he continued:

"What is to be done? I must be resigned to the disappointment
which has met me; but as to disposing of my person so absolutely,
I protest. Had it been your intention, my father, to make a
mill-hand of me, you should have begun that work earlier. My
individuality is now developed, and cannot be pounded in through
the gate of a given cemetery. To rear me as a great lord and
permit--even demand--during a rather long period that I should
use all the good things of society, and be distinguished most
brilliantly for your sake, and then thrust into a school of
economy, modesty, and labor is--pardon me if I call the thing by
its name--illogical and devoid of sequence. I might even add,
that it lacks justice; but I do not wish to defend myself with
arguments taken from painted pots. One thing is certain--namely
this: that I shall not