“It's Norma Hardacre.”
“Norma Hardacre!” The echo came from Jimmie as from a hollow cave, and was followed by a silence no less cavernous. The world was suddenly reduced to an empty shell, black, meaningless.
“Yes,” said Morland, with a short laugh. He carefully selected, cut, and lit a cigar, then turned his back and examined the half-finished picture. He felt the Briton's shamefacedness in the novelty of the position of affianced lover. The echo that in Jimmie's ears had sounded so forlorn was to him a mere exclamation of surprise. His solicitude as to the cigar and his inspection of the picture saved him by lucky chance from seeing Jimmie's face, which wore the blank, piteous look of a child that has had its most cherished possession snatched out of its hand and thrown into the fire. Such episodes in life cannot be measured by time as it is reckoned in the physical universe. To Jimmie, standing amid the chaos of his dreams, indefinite hours seemed to have passed since he had spoken. For indefinite hours he seemed to grope towards reconstruction. He lived intensely in the soul's realm, where time is not, was swept through infinite phases of emotion; finally awoke to a consciousness of renunciation, full and generous. Perhaps a minute and a half had elapsed. He crossed swiftly to Morland and clapped him on the shoulder.
“The woman among all women I could have wished for you.”
His voice quavered a little; but Morland, turning round, saw nothing in Jimmie's eyes but the honest gladness he had taken for granted he should find there. The earnest scrutiny he missed. He laughed again.
“There are not many in London to touch her,” he said in his self-satisfied way.
“Is there one?”
“You seem more royalist than—well, than Morland King,” said the happy lover, chuckling at his joke. “I wish I had the artist's command of superlatives as you have, Jimmie. It would come in deuced handy sometimes. Now if, for instance, you wanted to describe the reddest thing that ever was, you would find some hyperbolic image for it, whereas I could only say it was damned red. See what I mean?”
“It does n't matter what you say, but what you feel,” said Jimmie. “Perhaps we hyperbolic people fritter away emotions in the mere frenzy of expressing them. The mute man often has deeper feelings.”
“Oh, I'm not going to set up as an unerupted volcano,” laughed Morland. “I'm only the average man that has got the girl he has set his heart on—and of course I think her in many ways a paragon, otherwise I should n't have set my heart on her. There are plenty to pick from, God knows. And they let you know it too, by Jove. You're lucky enough to live out of what is called Society, so you can't realise how they shy themselves at you. Sometimes one has to be simply a brute and dump 'em down hard. That's what I liked about Norma Hardacre. She required no dumping.”