Tetlow startled.  “No—­that is, yes,” he stammered.  “That is, I met him a few times.”

“Often enough to find out that he was crazy?”

“Oh, yes.  He explained some of his ideas to me.  Yes—­he was quite mad, poor fellow.”

Norman gave way to a fit of silent laughter.  “I can imagine,” he presently said, “what you’d have thought if Columbus or Alexander or Napoleon or Stevenson or even the chaps who doped out the telephone and the telegraph—­if they had talked to you before they arrived.  Or even after they arrived, if they had been explaining some still newer and bigger idea not yet accomplished.”

“You don’t think Mr. Hallowell was mad?”

“He was mad, assuming that you are the standard of sanity.  Otherwise, he was a great man.  There’ll be statues erected and pages of the book of fame devoted to the men who carry out his ideas.”

“His death was certainly a great loss to his daughter,” said Tetlow in his heaviest, most bourgeois manner.

“I said he was a great man,” observed Norman.  “I didn’t say he was a great father.  A great man is never a great father.  It takes a small man to be a great father.”

“At any rate, her having no parents or relatives doesn’t matter, now that she has you,” said Tetlow, his manner at once forced and constrained.

“Um,” muttered Norman.

Said Tetlow:  “Perhaps you misunderstood why I—­I acted as I did about her, toward the last.”

“It was of no importance,” said Norman brusquely.  “I wish to hear nothing about it.”

“But I must explain, Fred. She piqued me by showing so plainly that she despised me.  I must admit the truth, though I’ve got as much vanity as the next man, and don’t like to admit it.  She despised me, and it made me mad.”

An expression of grim satire passed over Norman’s face.  Said he:  “She despised me, too.”

“Yes, she did,” said Tetlow.  “And both of us were certainly greatly her superiors—­in every substantial way.  It seemed to me most—­most——­”

“Most impertinent of her?” suggested Norman.

“Precisely. Most impertinent.”

“Rather say, ignorant and small.  My dear Tetlow, let me tell you something.  Anybody, however insignificant, can be loved.  To be loved means nothing, except possibly a hallucination in the brain of the lover.  But to love—­that’s another matter.  Only a great soul is capable of a great love.”

“That is true,” murmured Tetlow sentimentally, preening in a quiet, gentle way.

Said Norman sententiously:  “You stopped loving.  It was I that kept on.”

Tetlow looked uncomfortable.  “Yes—­yes,” he said.  “But we were talking of her—­of her not appreciating the love she got.  And I was about to say—­” Earnestly—­“Fred, she’s not to be blamed for her folly!  She’s very, very young—­and has all the weaknesses and vanities of youth——­”