it's bad for the child. We quarrel
dreadfully--at least, she doesn't."

"What about?" Sypher asked gravely.

"All sorts of things. You see, if I want breakfast an hour before
dinner-time, it upsets the household. Then there was the nose machine--and
other inventions for the baby, which perhaps might kill it. You can explain
all this and tell them that the marriage has been a dreadful mistake on
poor Emmy's side, and that we've decided to live apart. You will do this
for me, won't you?"

"I can't say I'll do it with pleasure," said Sypher, "for I'm more than
sorry to hear your news. I suspected as much when I met you in Paris. But
I'll see Mrs. Oldrieve as soon as possible and explain."

"Thank you," said Septimus; "you don't know what a service you would be
rendering me."

He uttered a sigh of relief and relit his cigar which had gone out during
his appeal. Then there was a silence. Septimus looked dreamily out at the
row of trees that marked the famous lawn reaching down to the railway line.
The mist had thickened with the fall of the day and hung heavy on the
branches, and the sky was gray. Sypher watched him, greatly moved; tempted
to cry out that he knew all, that he was not taken in by the simple legend
of his ungovernable temper and unlovely disposition. His heart went out to
him, as to a man who dwelt alone on lofty heights, inaccessible to common
humanity. He was filled with pity and reverence for him. Perhaps he
exaggerated. But Sypher was an idealist. Had he not set Sypher's Cure as
the sun in his heaven and Zora as one of the fixed stars?

It grew dark. Sypher rang for the lamp and tea.

"Or would you like breakfast?" he asked laughingly.

"I've just had supper," said Septimus. "Wiggleswick found some cheese in a
cupboard. I buried it in the front garden." A vague smile passed on his
face like a pale gleam of light over water on a cloudy day. "Wiggleswick is
deaf. He couldn't hear it."

"He's a lazy scoundrel," said Sypher. "I wonder you don't sack him."

Septimus licked a hanging strip of cigar-end into position--he could never
smoke a cigar properly--and lit it for the third time.

"Wiggleswick is good for me," said he. "He keeps me human. I am apt to
become a machine. I live so much among them. I've been working hard on a
new gun--or rather an old gun. It's field artillery, quick-firing. I got on
to the idea again from a sighting apparatus I invented. I have the
specification in my pocket. The