"In other words," his father interrupted, "to tempt me to support you--or rather as it now turns out to help you to get married." "Well, why not?" said Guy. "I'm your only son. You can spare the money. Why shouldn't you help me? I'm not asking you to do anything before I've justified myself. I'm only asking you to wait a year. If my book is a failure, it will be I who pay the penalty, not you. My confidence will be severely damaged whereas in your case only your conceit will be faintly ruffled." "Were I really a conceited man, I should resent your last remark," said his father. "But let it pass, and finish what you were going to say." Guy got up and went to the window, seeking to find from the moonlight a coolness that would keep his temper in hand. "Would you have preferred that I did not ask Pauline to marry, that I made love to her without any intention of marriage?" "Not at all," his father replied. "I imagine that you still possess some self-restraint, that when you began to feel attracted to her you could have wrestled with yourself against what in the circumstances was a purely selfish emotion." "But why, why? What really good reason can you bring forward against my behaviour, except reasons based on a cowardly fear of not being prosperous? You have always impressed on me so deeply the identity of your youthful ambitions with mine that I don't suppose I'm assuming too much when I ask what you would have done, if you had met Mother when you were not in a position to marry her immediately? Would you have said nothing?" "I hope I should have had sufficient restraint not to want to marry anybody until I was able to offer material support as well as a higher devotion." "But if ... oh, love is not a matter of the will." "Excuse me," his father contradicted obstinately. "Everything is a matter of will. That is precisely the point I am trying to make." Guy marched over to the fireplace and, balancing himself on the fender, proclaimed the attainment of a deadlock. "You and I, my dear Father, differ in fundamentals. Supposing I admit for a moment that I may be wrong, aren't you just as wrong in not trying to see my point of view? Supposing for instance Tennyson had paid attention to criticism--I don't mean of his work, but of his manner of life--what would have happened?" "I can't afford to run the risk of being considered the fond parent by announcing you to the world as a second Tennyson. Thirty-five years of a schoolmaster's life have at least taught me that parents as parents have a natural propensity toward the worst excesses of human folly." "Then in other words," Guy responded, "I'm to mess up my life to preserve your dignity. That's what it amounts to. I tell you I believe in myself. I'm convinced that beside will, there is destiny." Mr. Hazlewood sniffed. "Destiny is the weak man's canonization of his own vices."