e, isn't it?"

Zora came up to him, tea in hand, a pleasant smile on her face.

"The Nunsmere air will rest you," she said demurely.

"I don't think much of the air if you're not in it. It's like whiskey-less
soda water." He drew a long breath. "My God! It's good to see you again.
You're the one creature on this earth who believes in the Cure as I do
myself."

Zora glanced at him guiltily. Her enthusiasm for the Cure as a religion was
tepid. In her heart she did not believe in it. She had tried it a few weeks
before on the sore head of a village baby, with disastrous results; then
the mother had called in the doctor, who wrote out a simple prescription
which healed the child immediately. The only real evidence of its powers
she had seen was on Septimus's brown boots. Humanity, however, forbade her
to deny the faith with which Clem Sypher credited her; also a genuine
feeling of admiration mingled with pity for the man.

"Do you find much scepticism about?" she asked.

"It's lack of enthusiasm I complain of," he replied. "Instead of accepting
it as the one heaven-sent remedy, people will use any other puffed and
advertised stuff. Chemists are even lukewarm. A grain of mustard seed of
faith among them would save me thousands of pounds a year. Not that I want
to roll in money, Mrs. Middlemist. I'm not an avaricious man. But a great
business requires capital--and to spend money merely in flogging the
invertebrate is waste--desperate waste."

It was the first time that Zora had heard the note of depression.

"Now that you are here, you must stay for a breathing space," she said
kindly. "You must forget it, put it out of your mind, take a holiday.
Strong as you are, you are not cast iron, and if you broke down, think what
a disaster it would be for the Cure."

"Will you help me to have a holiday?"

She laughed. "To the best of my ability--and provided you don't want to
make me shock Nunsmere too much."

He waved his hand in the direction of the village and said, Napoleonically:

"I'll look after Nunsmere. I have the motor here. We can go all over the
country. Will you come?"

"On one condition."

"And that?"

"That you won't spread the Cure among our Surrey villages, and that you'll
talk of something else all the time."

He rose and put out his hand. "I accept," he cried frankly. "I'm not a
fool. I know you're right. When are you coming to see Penton Court? I will
give a housewarming You say that Dix has set