"Not so," replied Anton, indignantly; "my duty to Bernhard leads me to a different course. I must demand from you that you break off your connection with Rosalie, whatever its nature, and strive only to see in her what you always should have seen—the sister of my friend."
"Really," returned Fink, in a mocking tone, "I have no objection to your making this demand; but if I do not comply with it, how then?—always supposing, which, by the way, I deny, that I was the fortunate expected one."
"If you do not," cried Anton, in high excitement, "I can never forgive you. This is more than mere want of feeling—it is something worse."
"And what, pray?" coldly asked Fink.
"It is base," cried Anton. "It is bad enough to take advantage of the young girl's coquetry, but worse to forget her brother as well as me, through whom you made this unfortunate acquaintance."
"Be so good as to hear me say," replied Fink, lighting the lamp of his tea-kettle, "that I never gave you any right to speak to me thus. I have no wish to quarrel with you, but I shall be much obliged to you henceforth to drop this subject."
"Then I must leave you, for I can speak of nothing else while I have the conviction that you are acting unworthily."
Anton moved to the door. "I give you your choice; either you break with Rosalie, or, dreadful as it is to me to think of it, you break with me. If you do not by to-morrow evening give me an assurance that this intrigue is at an end, I go to Rosalie's mother."
"Good-night, thou stupid Tony!" said Fink.
The following day was a gray one for both.