“I am glad you think me worthy,” said Gustav, with a foolish lover’s smile.
“Oh, for that I don’t know; you may and you may not be. Young people must take their chance; it’s for them to choose, and for them to decide. You are comfortably off, I hope?”
“Comfortably off!” burst out Gustav in radiant incoherence, “you ask a man to whom the gates of Paradise have been opened if he is comfortably off? I pray you, do not speak to me about it; settle everything as you will, only leave me to my thoughts and my happiness.”
This might suit a lover, but could hardly be expected to suit the young lady’s guardians.
“That is very well, but I refer to your means of support. Are you in a position to maintain a wife?” asked the practical Kyria Helene.
“I do not know,” said Gustav; “I am accounted a rich man.”
“But do your people live in Germany?” she proceeded, catechising him severely.
And then came the one great difficulty in Gustav’s path. Oh, if he could have abjured his nationality, gladly then would he have done so. A Turk, and to confess that to these Greeks!--It seemed a horrible risk. Gathering all his energies together, he shook back his head defiantly, and rather gasped than said:
“No, my people do not live in Germany. I am not a German. I am a Turk.”
“A Turk!” cried the woman, and held up her hands in dismay and repulsion.
To Selaka no word was possible; for him the Turk was the symbol of all that is most hateful in his country’s past. He stood transfixed, staring at the young man whom a moment ago he had been prepared to take to his heart, and to whom he had so readily consigned the one treasure of his existence. No, that was not possible. Inarime wed a Turk! It did not seem to him that worse degradation could be for a daughter of free Greece! Despite his contempt of the present, his patriotic pride was very fierce and unbending. He took a step nearer to Gustav, who was looking at him now not defiantly but imploringly, and said:
“There is surely some mistake. Perhaps you mean that you have been born in Turkey. But your name is surely German?”
“No, my name is not German, I merely adopted a German name in coming to Greece so that I might not wound national susceptibilities, and bring upon myself unnecessary coldness. My name is Daoud Bey. Kyria Selaka, what difference can this make? I love not Inarime the less because my people once oppressed yours. I am not responsible for the blunders of generations. You do not surely imagine that I am less likely to cherish and reverence your daughter than one of her own countrymen? Rather do I believe that the very fact of the past wrongs that her race endured at the hands of mine will add to my solemn charge on the day she entrusts herself to my care. That it shall not be for her grief you may believe, for I love her. Besides, you must think of Inarime, if even you refuse to think of me. For now she is mine, and nothing in regard to my nationality or race can alter that fact. You must accept it.”