“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: