'Personally, I would go to the end of the world for you, Lady Constantine; but--'
'I am preparing a work on variable stars. There is one of these which I have exceptionally observed for several months, and on this my great theory is mainly based. It has been hitherto called irregular; but I have detected a periodicity in its so-called irregularities which, if proved, would add some very valuable facts to those known on this subject, one of the most interesting, perplexing, and suggestive in the whole field of astronomy. Now, to clinch my theory, there should be a sudden variation this week,--or at latest next week,--and I have to watch every night not to let it pass. You see my reason for declining, Lady Constantine.'
'Young men are always so selfish!' she said.
'It might ruin the whole of my year's labour if I leave now!' returned the youth, greatly hurt. 'Could you not wait a fortnight longer?'
'No,--no. Don't think that I have asked you, pray. I have no wish to inconvenience you.'
'Lady Constantine, don't be angry with me! Will you do this,--watch the star for me while I am gone? If you are prepared to do it effectually, I will go.'
'It will be some trouble. You would have to come here every clear evening about nine. If the sky were not clear, then you would have to come at four in the morning, should the clouds have dispersed.'
'Could not the telescope be brought to my house?'
'Perhaps you did not observe its real size,--that it was fixed to a frame- work? I could not afford to buy an equatorial, and I have been obliged to rig up an apparatus of my own devising, so as to make it in some measure answer the purpose of an equatorial. It _could_ be moved, but I would rather not touch it.'
'Well, I'll go to the telescope,' she went on, with an emphasis that was not wholly playful. 'You are the most ungallant youth I ever met with; but I suppose I must set that down to science. Yes, I'll go to the tower at nine every night.'
'And alone? I should prefer to keep my pursuits there unknown.'
'And alone,' she answered, quite overborne by his inflexibility.
'You will not miss the morning observation, if it should be necessary?'
'And I give mine. I suppose I ought not to have been so exacting!' He spoke with that sudden emotional sense of his own insignificance which made these alternations of mood possible. 'I will go anywhere--do anything for you--this moment--to-morrow or at any time. But you must return with me to the tower, and let me show you the observing process.'