ad never broken a contract in his
life, and they shook hands and went their respective ways, Septimus to the
_appartement_ in the Boulevard Raspail, and Sypher thoughtfully in the
direction of the Luxembourg.

He was sorry, very sorry for Septimus Dix. His kindness of heart had not
allowed him to tell the brutal truth about the guns. The naval expert had
scoffed in the free manner of those who follow the sea and declared the
great guns a mad inventor's dream. The Admiralty was overwhelmed with such
things. The proofs were so much waste paper. Sypher had come prepared to
break the news as gently as he could; but after all their talk it was not
in his heart to do so. And the two hundred pounds--he regarded it as money
given to a child to play with. He would never claim it. He was sorry, very
sorry for Septimus. He looked back along the past year and saw the man's
dog-like devotion to Zora Middlemist. But why did he marry Emmy, loving the
sister as he did? Why live apart from her, having married her? And the
child? It was all a mystery in which he did not see clear. He pitied the
ineffectuality of Septimus with the kind yet half-contemptuous pity of the
strong man with a fine nature. But as for his denial of Zora's faith, he
laughed it away. Egotistical, yes. Zora had posed the same question as
Septimus and he had answered it. But her faith in the Cure itself, his
mission to spread it far and wide over the earth, and to save the nations
from vulgar competitors who thought of nothing but sordid gain--that, he
felt sure, remained unshaken.

Yet as he walked along, in the alien though familiar city, he was smitten,
as with physical pain, by a craving for her presence, for the gleam of her
eyes, for the greatness of sympathy and comprehension that inhabited her
generous and beautiful frame. The need of her was imperious. He stopped at
a cafe on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, called for the wherewithal to write,
and like a poet in the fine frenzy of inspiration, poured out his soul to
her over the heels of the armies of the world.

He had walked a great deal during the day. When he stepped out of the cab
that evening at the Gare de Lyon, he felt an unfamiliar stinging in his
heel. During the process of looking after his luggage and seeking his train
he limped about the platform. When he undressed for the night in his
sleeping compartment, he found that a ruck in his sock had caused a large
blister. He regarded it with superstitio