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."