He looks at him.
But the professor's new humor is short-lived.

He sinks upon a chair in a tired sort of a way, letting his arms fall over the sides of it.

As a type of utter despair he is a distinguished specimen.
"Why don't you take her home again, back to the old aunt ?" says Hardinge, moved by his misery.
"I can't.

She tells me it would be useless, that the house is locked up, and--and besides, Hardinge, her aunt--after _this_, you know--would be----" "Naturally," says Hardinge, after which he falls back upon his cigar.
"Light your pipe," says he, "and we'll think it over." The professor lights it, and both men draw nearer to each other.
"I'm afraid she won't go back to her aunt any way," says the professor, as a beginning to the "thinking it over." He pushes his glasses up to his forehead, and finally discards them altogether, flinging them on the table near.
"If she saw you now she might understand," says Hardinge--for, indeed, the professor without his glasses loses thirty per cent.

of old Time.
"She wouldn't," says the professor.