kindly.

"You've done me a great honor in telling me this. I understand. You want
the earth, or as much of it as you can get, and when you've got it and
found out what it means, you'll make a great use of it. Have you many
friends?"

"No," said Zora. He had an uncanny way of throwing her back on to
essentials. "None stronger than myself."

"Will you take me as a friend? I'm strong enough," said Sypher.

"Willingly," she said, dominated by his earnestness.

"That's good. I may be able to help you when you've found your vocation. I
can tell you, at any rate, how to get to what you want. You've just got to
keep a thing in view and go for it and never let your eyes wander to right
or left or up or down. And looking back is fatal--the truest thing in
Scripture is about Lot's wife. She looked back and was turned into a pillar
of salt."

He paused, his face assumed an air of profound reflection, and he added
with gravity:

"And the Clem Sypher of the period when he came by, made use of her, and
plastered her over with posters of his cure."

* * * * *

The day she had appointed as the end of her Monte Carlo visit arrived. She
would first go to Paris, where some Americans whom she had met in Florence
and with whom she had exchanged occasional postcards pressed her to join
them. Then London; and then a spell of rest in the lavender of Nunsmere.
That was her programme. Septimus Dix was to escort her as far as Paris, in
defiance of the proprieties as interpreted by Turner. What was to become of
him afterwards neither conjectured; least of all Septimus himself. He said
nothing about getting back to Shepherd's Bush. Many brilliant ideas had
occurred to him during his absence which needed careful working out.
Wherefore Zora concluded that he proposed to accompany her to London.

A couple of hours before the train started she dispatched Turner to
Septimus's hotel to remind him of the journey. Turner, a strong-minded
woman of forty--like the oyster she had been crossed in love and like her
mistress she held men in high contempt--returned with an indignant tale.
After a series of parleyings with Mr. Dix through the medium of the hotel
_chasseur_, who had a confused comprehension of voluble English, she had
mounted at Mr. Dix's entreaty to his room. There she found him, half clad
and in his dressing-gown, staring helplessly at a wilderness of clothing
and toilet articles for which there was no s