Von Essen growled incoherently. "Marriage or no marriage, it's nothing to me.... I've given you to him. I'm through with you. If he'll marry you, so much the better for you."
He twisted her about roughly so that she faced the stairs, then he pushed her forward. "Go down!" he said.
She walked with what dignity she could muster, very white, very quiet. She had no sense of being outraged; her father's manner and conduct toward her did not matter. They did not exist. She walked slowly, head erect, and entered the library. Cantor stood expectant.
He bowed gravely. "Good afternoon," he said, courteously.
"Here she is," von Essen bellowed. "I've put an end to her tricks. It will be yes or no _now_--and it won't be no."
She looked at him curiously, then turned her eyes upon Cantor. "I understand you've changed your offer again," she said, quietly. "You're for marrying me once more."
"I'm for having you however I can get you," he said, with a smile. "One hesitates to speak of love with a third party present, even if the third party is the father...."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Love means different things to different people.... I want you. For me that is love. I want you so much that I have been patient. I've courted you patiently, haven't I?"
She spoke without volition, automatically, almost as if the words had been caused to issue from her lips by some ventriloquist. "Under what name do you want to marry me? Cantor or Adolf von Arnheim?"
He stiffened into immobility; not even his eyes seemed alive. His face, naturally without color, lost even the tint which it possessed. In an instant he was transformed. He was not the careless, mocking-courteous lover; he was another man, a man of stern military bearing, a man of purpose, a man ruthless in carrying out that purpose. Hildegarde knew she was seeing the true Cantor at last, and she liked him better. She saw him infinitely capable, a man to dare and to accomplish, a man to be trusted by high authority with a mission of life or death. She almost admired him in that moment.
He remained motionless, and she knew he was not thinking of her. He was thinking of his work and what this meant to his work. He had dropped the moment and was weighing keenly, ably, the circumstance, and planning what he must do as a result of it. Somehow she felt he experienced no fear, no emotion of any sort. He merely _thought_. His reaction was purely intellectual.