“You know, I’m going to use it in a sermon some time.”

“Yes—­it’s very funny,” she answered, a little uncertainly.

“Funny?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think so?”

“Of course—­I’ve heard the bishop tell it myself—­and I know he thinks it funny.”

“Well—­then I’ll use it as a funny story.  Of course, it is funny—­I only thought”—­what it was he only thought Nancy never knew.

Small bits of things to wonder at, these were, and the wonder brought no illumination.  She only knew there were times when they two seemed of different worlds, bereft of power to communicate; and at these times his superbly assured wooing left her slightly dazed.

But there were other times, and different—­and slowly she became used to the idea of him—­persuaded both by his own court and by the spirited encomiums that he evoked from Aunt Bell.

Aunt Bell was at that time only half persuaded by Allan to re-enter the church of her blameless infancy.  She was still minded to seek a little longer outside the fold that rapport with the Universal Mind which she had never ceased to crave.  In this process she had lately discarded Esoteric Buddhism for Subliminal Monitions induced by Psychic Breathing and correct breakfast-food.  For all that, she felt competent to declare that Allan was the only possible husband for her niece, and her niece came to suspect that this might be so.

When at last she had wondered herself into a state of inward readiness—­a state still governed by her outward habit of resistance, this last was beaten down by a letter from Mrs. Tednick, who had been a school friend as Clara Tremaine, and was now married, apparently with results not too desirable.

“Never, my dear,” ran the letter to Nancy, “permit yourself to think of marrying a man who has not a sense of humour.  Do I seem flippant?  Don’t think it.  I am conveying to you the inestimable benefits of a trained observation.  Humour saves a man from being impossible in any number of ways—­from boring you to beating you. (You may live to realise that the tragedy of the first is not less poignant than that of the second.) Whisper, dear!—­All men are equally vain—­at least in their ways with a woman—­but humour assuredly preserves many unto death from betraying it egregiously.  Beware of him if he lack it.  He has power to crucify you daily, and yet be in honest ignorance of your tortures.  Don’t think I am cynical—­and indeed, my own husband is one of the best and dearest of souls in the world, the biggest heart—­but be sure you marry no man without humour.  Don’t think a man has it merely because he tells funny stories; the humour I mean is a kind of sense of the fitness of things that keeps a man from forgetting himself.  And if he hasn’t humour, don’t think he can make you happy, even if his vanity doesn’t show.  He can’t—­after the expiration of that brief period in which the vanity of each is a holy joy to the other.  Remember now!”