"That wouldn't have made any difference."
"No, I suppose not. I am I and Basil is Basil and that's the whole story, and it's just like a man of that sort to turn round and try to kill you when you won't let him cling to you any longer."
"Grievances again!" thought Serge, and he saw then how impossible was his position. He could not tell Minna of Basil's willingness to take her back upon conditions. Either of them or both must surrender their grievances if anything were to be done. That seemed to be extremely improbable.
"I'm quite willing to go back, if Basil----"
More conditions! Oh, the folly of insistence upon rights! . . . Serge dropped the subject, accepted the inevitable and asked:
"If he does not withdraw the petition I suppose you will not defend."
"I shall defend my honour if I have to spend my last penny on it. I'm not going to have mud thrown at me and say 'Thank you' for it. I don't trust Basil. He's a vindictive little beast. He's sure to say our marriage was happy. . . . Besides, I must think of the children."
"I do. Their mother's honour is precious to them."
"Personally," said Serge, "I would sell my honour for twopence."
"Oh! you! . . . But then you don't care what anybody thinks of you."
"Then it isn't any good talking to you. You really are an immoral man. . . . If Basil goes for me, I shall go for him. You'd hold up the other cheek, I know, but then you're not human. I told my children once to think before they struck, and Benny said, 'I do think, and then I strike. . . .' I'm like that too. I'm not going to listen to you. I'm not going back to Basil, I'm not going to lie down and let him weep over my sins in public. He's a little beast and everybody shall know that he's a little beast. . . ."
Minna had worked herself up into a state of anger. She was hot and red in the face with it, and looked coarse and unpleasant.
"No wonder knight-errantry is dead, since women have taken upon themselves to be as stupidly selfish as men."
He made one last effort, and suggested that she should take the more sensible course and leave it to Basil unopposed to set the cumbrous machinery of the law in motion, if only for the sake of her father and mother. To that Minna only replied with a brilliant but spiteful caricature of Mrs. Folyat's state of mind as slowly she digested the unpalatable truth that all marriages were not made in Heaven.