“Jerry!”

I started.

“Again!” I said.

“What?”

“Say it again.  Do, please.  Now.”

“Very well.  Jerry!”

“It was the first time you had called me by my Christian name.  I don’t suppose you’ve the remotest notion how splendid it sounds when you say it.  There is something poetical, almost holy, about it.”

“Jerry, please!”

“Say on.”

“Do be sensible.  Don’t you see how serious this is?  We must think how we can make father consent.”

“All right,” I said.  “We’ll tackle the point.  I’m sorry to be frivolous, but I’m so happy I can’t keep it all in.  I’ve got you and I can’t think of anything else.”

“Try.”

“I’ll pull myself together. . . .  Now, say on once more.”

“We can’t marry without his consent.”

“Why not?” I said, not having a marked respect for the professor’s whims.  “Gretna Green is out of date, but there are registrars.”

“I hate the very idea of a registrar,” she said with decision.  “Besides——­”

“Well?”

“Poor father would never get over it.  We’ve always been such friends.  If I married against his wishes, he would—­oh, you know.  Not let me near him again, and not write to me.  And he would hate it all the time he was doing it.  He would be bored to death without me.”

“Who wouldn’t?” I said.

“Because, you see, Norah has never been quite the same.  She has spent such a lot of her time on visits to people, that she and father don’t understand each other so well as he and I do.  She would try and be nice to him, but she wouldn’t know him as I do.  And, besides, she will be with him such a little, now she’s going to be married.”

“But, look here,” I said, “this is absurd.  You say your father would never see you again, and so on, if you married me.  Why?  It’s nonsense.  It isn’t as if I were a sort of social outcast.  We were the best of friends till that man Hawk gave me away like that.”

“I know.  But he’s very obstinate about some things.  You see, he thinks the whole thing has made him look ridiculous, and it will take him a long time to forgive you for that.”

I realised the truth of this.  One can pardon any injury to oneself, unless it hurts one’s vanity.  Moreover, even in a genuine case of rescue, the rescued man must always feel a little aggrieved with his rescuer, when he thinks the matter over in cold blood.  He must regard him unconsciously as the super regards the actor-manager, indebted to him for the means of supporting existence, but grudging him the limelight and the centre of the stage and the applause.  Besides, every one instinctively dislikes being under an obligation which they can never wholly repay.  And when a man discovers that he has experienced all these mixed sensations for nothing, as the professor had done, his wrath is likely to be no slight thing.