"Why did you send for Septimus?"

"Why are you putting me through this interrogatory?" he laughed.

"You will learn soon," said Zora. "I want to get everything clear in my mind. I've had a great shock. I feel as if I had been beaten all over. For the first time I recognize the truth of the proverb about a woman, a dog, and a walnut tree. Why did you send for Septimus?"

Sypher leaned back in his chair, and as the ill.u.s.trated paper prevented him from seeing Zora's face, he looked reflectively at the fire.

"I've always told you that I am superst.i.tious. Septimus seems to be gifted with an unconscious sense of right in an infinitely higher degree than any man I have ever known. His dealings with Emmy showed it. His sending for you to help me showed it. He has shown it in a thousand ways. If it hadn't been for him and his influence on my mind I don't think I should have come to that decision. When I had come to it, I just wanted him. Why, I can't tell you."

"I suppose you knew that he was in love with me?" said Zora in the same even tone.

"Yes," said Sypher. "That's why he married your sister."

"Do you know why--in the depths of his heart--he sent me the tail of the little dog?"

"He knew somehow that it was right. I believe it was. I tell you I'm superst.i.tious. But in what absolute way it was right I can't imagine."

"I can," said Zora. "He knew that my place was by your side. He knew that I cared for you more than for any man alive." She paused. Then she said deliberately: "He knew that I loved you all the time."

Sypher plucked the ill.u.s.trated paper from her hand and cast it across the room, and, bending over the arm of his chair, seized her wrist.

"Zora, do you mean that?"

She nodded, fluttered a glance at him, and put out her free hand to claim a few moments' grace.

"I left you to look for a mission in life. I've come back and found it at the place I started from. It's a big mission, for it means being a mate to a big man. But if you will let me try, I'll do my best."

Sypher thrust away the protecting hand.

"You can talk afterwards," he said.

Thus did Zora come to the knowledge of things real. When the gates were opened, she walked in with a tread not wanting in magnificence. She made the great surrender, which is woman's greatest victory, very proudly, very humbly, very deliciously. She had her greatnesses.

She freed herself, flushed and trembling, throbbing with a strange happiness that caught her breath. This time she believed Nature, and laughed with her in her heart in close companionship. She was mere woman after all, with no mission in life but the accomplishment of her womanhood, and she gloried in the knowledge. This was exceedingly good for her. Sypher regarded her with shining eyes as if she had been an immortal vesting herself in human clay for divine love of him; and this was exceedingly good for Sypher. After much hyperbole they descended to kindly commonplace.

"But I don't see now," he cried, "how I can ask you to marry me. I don't even know how I'm to earn my living."

"There are Septimus's inventions. Have you lost your faith in them?"

He cried with sudden enthusiasm, as who should say, if an Immortal has faith in them, then indeed must they be divine:

"Do you believe in them now?"

"Utterly. I've grown superst.i.tious, too. Wherever we turn there is Septimus. He has raised Emmy from h.e.l.l to heaven. He has brought us two together. He is our guardian angel. He'll never fail us. Oh, Clem, thank heaven," she exclaimed fervently, "I've got something to believe in at last."

Meanwhile the guardian angel, entirely unconscious of apotheosis, sat in the little flat in Chelsea blissfully eating crumpets over which Emmy had spread the preposterous amount of b.u.t.ter which proceeds from an overflowing heart. She knelt on the hearth rug watching him adoringly as if he were a hierophant eating sacramental wafer. They talked of the future. He mentioned the nice houses he had seen in Berkeley Square.

"Berkeley Square would be very charming," said Emmy, "but it would mean carriages and motor-cars and powdered footmen and Ascot and b.a.l.l.s and dinner parties and presentations at Court. You would be just in your element, wouldn't you, dear?"

She laughed and laid her happy head on his knee.

"No, dear. If we want to have a fling together, you and I, in London, let us keep on this flat as a _pied-a-terre_. But let us live at Nunsmere. The house is quite big enough, and if it isn't you can always add on a bit at the cost of a month's rent in Berkeley Square. Wouldn't you prefer to live at Nunsmere?"

"You and the boy and my workshop are all I want in the world," said he.

"And not Wiggleswick?"

One of his rare smiles pa.s.sed across his face.

"I think Wiggleswick will be upset."

Emmy laughed again. "What a funny household it will be--Wiggleswick and Madame Bolivard! It will be lovely!"

Septimus reflected for an anxious moment. "Do you know, dear," he said diffidently, "I've dreamed of something all my life--I mean ever since I left home. It has always seemed somehow beyond my reach. I wonder whether it can come true now. So many wonderful things have happened to me that perhaps this, too--"

"What is it, dear?" she asked, very softly.

"I seem to be so marked off from other men; but I've dreamed all my life of having in my house a neat, proper, real parlor maid in a pretty white cap and ap.r.o.n. Do you think it can be managed?"

With her head on his knee she said in a queer voice:

"Yes, I think it can."

He touched her cheek and suddenly drew his hand away.

"Why, you're crying! What a selfish brute I am! Of course we won't have her if she would be in your way."

Emmy lifted her face to him.

"Oh, you dear, beautiful, silly Septimus," she said, "don't you understand?

Isn't it just like you? You give every one else the earth, and in return you ask for a parlor maid."

"Well, you see," he said in a tone of distressed apology, "she would come in so handy. I could teach her to mind the guns."

"You dear!" cried Emmy.

THE END