“A man!” “There--get it for me, like a dear old chap, and don’t talk. It’s so easy for a saint to point a moral.” He was so obviously on the verge of utter collapse that I felt the lesser responsibility would be to humor him. I fetched what he begged for and he gulped down a wineglassful of the raw stuff. “Now,” I said, “are you better?” “A little drop more and I’m a peacock with my tail up.” He tossed off a second dose of almost like proportion. “Now,” he said, dangling his legs over the bedside, and giving a foolish reckless laugh, “question, mon frère, and I will answer.” Though his manner disgusted and repelled me, I must needs get to the root of things. “You fled from him to England again?” “To London, of all places. It’s the safest in the world, they say; where a man may leave his wife and live in the next street for twenty-five years without her knowing it.” “You haven’t left yours?” “No--we stick together. Zyp’s trumps, she is, you long-faced moralizer; not that she holds one by her looks any longer. And that’s to my credit for sticking to her. You missed something in my being beforehand with you there, I can tell you.” Was this pitiful creature worth one thrill of passion or resentment? I let him go on. “For months that devil followed us,” he said. “At last he forced a quarrel upon me in some vile drinking-place and brought me a challenge from the man he was seconding. You should have seen his face as he handed it to me! It took all the fighting nerve out of me. I swear I would have stood up to his fellow if he had found another backer.” “And you ran away?” “What else could I do?” “And he pursued you again?” “There isn’t any doubt of it--though his dreadful face hasn’t appeared to me as yet.” “You had the nerve, it seems, to travel down here all alone?” “I borrowed it. Sometimes now, when the stuff runs warm in me, I feel almost as if I could turn upon him and defy him. I’m in the mood at this moment. Why doesn’t he come when I’m ready for him? Oh, the brute! The miserable, cowardly brute!” He jumped to his feet, gnashing his teeth and shaking his fists convulsively in the air. As he stood thus, the door of the room opened, and I turned to see my father fall forward upon his face, with a bitter cry. CHAPTER XLIII. ANOTHER RESPITE. Jason stood looking stupidly down on the prostrate form, while I ran to it and struggled to turn it over and up into a sitting posture. “Father!” I cried, “I’m here--don’t you know me?”--then I turned fiercely to my brother and bade him shift his position out of the range of the staring eyes. “What’s the matter?” he muttered, sullenly. “I’ve done no harm. Can’t he see me, even, without going off into a fit?” “Get further away; do you hear?” He shambled aside, murmuring to himself. A little tremulous sigh issued from the throat of the poor stricken figure. I leaned over, seized the bottle of brandy from the bed, and moistened his lips with a few drops from it.