"None the less should I be, as I said, a spoiled man," he said, quietly. "I should be ashamed to come forward. It was I myself who sent myself and my prospects _caput_;[A] and for that sort of obscurity is the best taste and the right sphere."
[Footnote A: _Caput_--a German slang expression with the general significance of the English "gone to smash," but also a hundred other and wider meanings, impossible to render in brief.]
"But there's the boy," I suggested. "Let him have the advantage."
"Don't, don't!" he said, suddenly, and wincing visibly, as if I had touched a raw spot. "No; my one hope for him is that he may never be known as my son."
"Poor little beggar! I wonder what will become of him," he uttered, after a pause, during which I did not speak again.
Eugen puffed fitfully at his cigar, and at last knocking the ash from it and avoiding my eyes, he said, in a low voice:
"I suppose some time I must leave the boy."
"When he grows a little older--before he is old enough to feel it very much, though, I must part from him. It will be better."
Another pause. No sign of emotion, no quiver of the lips, no groan, though the heart might be afaint. I sat speechless.
"I have not come to the conclusion lately. I've always known it," he went on, and spoke slowly. "I have known it--and have thought about it--so as to get accustomed to it--see?"
"At that time--as you seem to have a fancy for the child--will you give an eye to him--sometimes, Friedel--that is, if you care enough for me--"
For a moment I did not speak. Then I said:
"You are quite sure the parting must take place?"
"When it does, will you give him to me--to my charge altogether?"
"If he must lose one father, let me grow as like another to him as I can."
"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--"