"Call me Iggie," he cried.
"But you have only known me such a short time," she said. "You have seen me, you say, a hundred times on the films, and I daresay you admired me immensely, but tell me this, Iggie, Is it my real character that you love?"
"No, no! A thousand times no!" he exclaimed.
"Then I cannot marry you," she answered coldly, turning away.
Crushed with disappointment Ignatius staggered from the room. He had no thought for poetry now, but wandered feverishly about the streets, searching for some mad excitement to stifle his despair. He played billiards and vingt-et-un. He took to drugs and to drink. He even had thoughts of standing for Parliament. But he soon found that the sorrow, gnawing at his heart was one that politics could never assuage nor alcohol drown, not at least at the present price of green Chartreuse.
One day as he slouched miserably along the pavement he saw the advertisement of a lecture outside the door of an institute. "The Ideal in Philosophy and Art," said the placard; and, scarcely knowing what he did, Ignatius went in. But the lecturer had barely begun to expound his theme, which he did in the following forcible words: "The categorical subjectivity of all intuitive apperceptions of the ideal"—when a wild light flashed in the poet's eyes and he started from his seat and rushed madly from the room. The lecturer wondered mildly what had happened, but blinked and went on. What had happened was that Ignatius Vavasour was pounding like a prize American trotter to the nearest telephone box.
"Viviana," he cried an hour later, when he had got through, "you remember what you said the day we met? Is it your real character that I love? And I said 'No.'"
"Yes, Iggie," she said with a catch in her voice.
"Did you mean Rabbits, Eggs, Eggs, Lloyd, or Babbits, Eggs, Albatross, Lloyd?"
"Albatross," she moaned.