After a while he broke out again: 

“Well, there’s one thing, sure.  The materializing has got to stop right where it is.  If she’s got to marry a spectre, let her marry a decent one out of the Middle Ages, like this one—­not a cowboy and a thief such as this protoplasmic tadpole’s going to turn into if Sellers keeps on fussing at it.  It costs five thousand dollars cash and shuts down on the incorporated company to stop the works at this point, but Sally Sellers’s happiness is worth more than that.”

He heard Sellers coming, and got himself to rights.  Sellers took a seat, and said: 

“Well, I’ve got to confess I’m a good deal puzzled.  It did certainly eat, there’s no getting around it.  Not eat, exactly, either, but it nibbled; nibbled in an appetiteless way, but still it nibbled; and that’s just a marvel.  Now the question is, what does it do with those nibblings?  That’s it—­what does it do with them?  My idea is that we don’t begin to know all there is to this stupendous discovery yet.  But time will show—­time and science—­give us a chance, and don’t get impatient.”

But he couldn’t get Hawkins interested; couldn’t make him talk to amount to anything; couldn’t drag him out of his depression.  But at last he took a turn that arrested Hawkins’s attention.

“I’m coming to like him, Hawkins.  He is a person of stupendous character—­absolutely gigantic.  Under that placid exterior is concealed the most dare-devil spirit that was ever put into a man—­he’s just a Clive over again.  Yes, I’m all admiration for him, on account of his character, and liking naturally follows admiration, you know.  I’m coming to like him immensely.  Do you know, I haven’t the heart to degrade such a character as that down to the burglar estate for money or for anything else; and I’ve come to ask if you are willing to let the reward go, and leave this poor fellow—­”

“Where he is?”

“Yes—­not bring him down to date.”

“Oh, there’s my hand; and my heart’s in it, too!”

“I’ll never forget you for this, Hawkins,” said the old gentleman in a voice which he found it hard to control.  “You are making a great sacrifice for me, and one which you can ill afford, but I’ll never forget your generosity, and if I live you shall not suffer for it, be sure of that.”

Sally Sellers immediately and vividly realized that she was become a new being; a being of a far higher and worthier sort than she had been such a little while before; an earnest being, in place of a dreamer; and supplied with a reason for her presence in the world, where merely a wistful and troubled curiosity about it had existed before.  So great and so comprehensive was the change which had been wrought, that she seemed to herself to be a real person who had lately been a shadow; a something which had lately been a nothing; a purpose, which had lately been a fancy; a finished temple, with the altar-fires lit and the voice of worship ascending, where before had been but an architect’s confusion of arid working plans, unintelligible to the passing eye and prophesying nothing.