champagne. "Truly a delicious
wine," said he.

Sypher said good-by to his guest on the steps of the club, and walked home
to his new chambers in St. James's deep in thought. For the first time
since his acquaintance with Rattenden, he was glad to part from him. He had
a great need of solitude. It came to him almost as a shock to realize that
things were happening in the world round about him quite as heroic, in the
eyes of the High Gods, as the battle between Sypher's Cure and Jebusa
Jones's Cuticle Remedy. The curtain of life had been lifted, and a flash of
its inner mysteries had been revealed. His eyes still were dazed. But he
had received the gift of vision. He had seen beyond doubt or question the
heart of Septimus Dix. He knew what he had done, why he had done it.

Zora Middlemist had passed Septimus by with her magnificent head in the
air. But he was not one of the little men.

"By God, he is not!" he cried aloud, and the cry came from his depths.

Zora Middlemist had passed him, Clem Sypher, by with her magnificent head
in the air.

He let himself into his chambers; they struck him as being chill and
lonely, the casual, uncared-for hiding-place of one of the little men. He
stirred the fire, almost afraid to disturb the cold silence by the rattle
of the poker against the bars of the grate. His slippers were set in
readiness on the hearth-rug, and the machine who valeted him had fitted
them with boot-trees. He put them on, and unlocking his desk, took out the
letter which he had received that morning from Zora.

"For you," she wrote, "I want victory all along the line--the apotheosis of
Sypher's Cure on Earth. For myself, I don't know what I want. I wish you
would tell me."

Clem Sypher sat in an arm-chair and looked into the fire until it went out.
For the first time in his life he did not know what he wanted.

CHAPTER XVII

The days that followed were darkened by overwhelming anxieties, so that he
speculated little as to the Ultimately Desired. A chartered accountant sat
in the office at Moorgate Street and shed around him the gloom of
statistics. Unless a miracle happened the Cure was doomed.

It is all very well to seat a little nigger on the safety-valve if the end
of the journey is in sight. The boiler may just last out the strain. But to
suppose that he will sit there in permanent security to himself and the
ship for an indefinite time is an optimism unwarranted by the general
experience