His forehead wrinkled.
“When you say things like that, I never can be sure if you mean them for satire, or not,” he answered. “If you’re meaning it for satire, you’re wrong, Medora, and I blame you; but if you really mean it, out of consideration to my time, then I can assure you there’s no need for you to go. In fact, you’ll type the lecture, I hope. It’s going to be quite as much to you as to me, I’m sure.”
“How can it be? You’re so thick-skinned. What’s the good of lectures to a person who’s living my life? You don’t care. You’ve got your work and your ambitions, and you’ll have the honour and glory, if there is any. But where do I come in? Who am I? What am I?”
“My future wife, I should think. You can’t accuse me of anything wrong in that category, Medora.”
“I’m not accusing you; I’m past all that. I’ll try to copy you. I’ll be patient. If you say you’ll see Mr. Dingle, or write to him—”
“I shall see him. He’s coming back, so I hear, to Ashprington.”
Then he returned to his lecture, and, with the ardour of youth, did not sleep that night until he had roughed out a general plan and placed the heads of his composition clearly before him.
Long after Medora had gone to bed and the little inn was asleep, Jordan scribbled on, and surprised himself at the compass of his thoughts. He was amazed to hear the clock strike two, and put away his books and papers at once.
He could recollect no previous occasion in his life on which he had been awake at two o’clock in the morning. He fell asleep longing to read what he had written to Medora, for he felt dimly sometimes that he was more outside her life and its interests than he should be; and since he could never rejoice her on any material base of trivial pleasures, he must make good his claim by force of intellect and a future far above that which the average working man could promise.
But he also intended to bend the bow in reason, let life have its say, and their home its domestic happiness. He believed that, when they were married, they would soon become everything in the world to one another.