He assented.
“When it does, will you give him to me—to my charge altogether?”
“What do you mean?”
“If he must lose one father, let me grow as like another to him as I can.”
“Friedhelm—”
“On no other condition,” said I. “I will not ‘have an eye’ to him occasionally. I will not let him go out alone among strangers, and give a look in upon him now and then.”
Eugen had covered his face with his hands, but spoke not.
“I will have him with me altogether, or not at all,” I finished, with a kind of jerk.
“Impossible!” said he, looking up with a pale face, and eyes full of anguish—the more intense in that he uttered not a word of it. “Impossible! You are no relation—he has not a claim—there is not a reason—not the wildest reason for such a—”
“Yes, there is; there is the reason that I won’t have it otherwise,” said I, doggedly.