Frederic tugged at his waistcoat and looked almost dignified as he said: "I have no wish to interfere in your affairs. I will thank you not to meddle with mine." "It happens, however," replied Serge, "that our affairs have overlapped. I must ask you to withdraw." "And if I refuse?" "Then it will become necessary for me to knock you down whenever I find you in my way. . . ." "May I ask. . . ?" "What I am getting out of it for myself? I was foolish enough to believe that you would not look for an interested motive. . . . The position is this. . . . You shirked a responsibility which I have had the pleasure and the privilege of assuming. Your beastly jealousy resents that, and you seem bent on taking up that old responsibility. There are two reasons why you should not do that--first, because it is too late; second, because your attempt to do so is an insult to your wife . . ." "Keep my wife out of it." "If you will tell your wife and ask her permission to make a settlement upon the boy . . ." "You know I can't do that. I can't afford it." "Then leave it alone." "No." "You'll take the consequences?" "I'll take the consequences and be damned to you. . . . It's a fine thing to do, isn't it?--to take a woman when she's gone under?" "My dear brother," said Serge, "you are the most childish little blackguard . . ." "I'm man enough, any way, to stand up for my own rights . . ." "When you learn that you have no rights you'll be a man . . . In a way you are right. My brother is not my keeper. I should prefer not to let the thing go any further, for your wife's sake. . . ." "Keep my wife out of it!" "Good-bye, then . . . You insist on being a fool?" "I shall do as I think best." The office-boy announced another client and Serge went away. * * * Frederic continued to waylay Annie Lipsett, but could never meet her without Serge, who called for her at her house in the morning and at her place of business in the evening. He wrote to her and implored her to give him an opportunity of explaining himself. (He had begun to believe, without reference to Jessie, whom he kept in a separate compartment of his mind, that he loved Annie, had never ceased to love her, and that a declaration of love would break down her resistance.) She did not reply and he wrote at great length explaining his desire to set her beyond anxiety, and hinting at the fires that were raging in his bosom, fires which he stoked with unceasing care. At last he had a letter from her. She wrote: "DEAR MR. FREDERIC,--Please, please believe that I want nothing from you, that I am happier as I am. I don't want my boy ever to know who his father was. He is mine by all the love I have given him. I could not share him with you, and to let you do anything for him would be sharing, wouldn't it? I have thought no ill of you for a long time now. I was to blame just as much as you. That is all over. You cannot take me into your life, therefore I cannot take you into mine . . ."