“It’s not fit for a pig to live in,” she declared.  “It’s a crime to leave you to that worthless old scoundrel.  I’ll talk to him before I go.  He won’t like it.  And then I’ll write to Emmy.  If that has no effect, I’ll go over to Paris and bring her to her senses.”

She had arrived royally indignant, having had a pitched battle with Cousin Jane, who took Emmy’s side and alluded to Septimus in terms of withering contempt.  Now she was furiously angry.  The two men looked at her with wistful adoration, for when Zora was furious in a good cause she was very beautiful.  And the adoration in each man’s heart was intensified by the consciousness of the pathetic futility of her noble rage.  It was for her own sake that the situation had arisen over which she made such a pother, and she was gloriously unconscious of it.  Sypher could not speak lest he should betray his knowledge of Septimus’s secret, and Septimus could only murmur incoherent ineffectualities concerning the perfection of Emmy, the worthlessness of himself, and the diamond soul that lodged in Wiggleswick’s forbidding body.  Zora would not listen to unreason.  It was Emmy’s duty to save her husband from the dust and ashes of his present cosiness, if she could do nothing else for him; and she, Zora, in her magnificence, was going to see that Emmy’s duty was performed.  Instead of writing she would start the next morning for Paris.  It would be well if Septimus could accompany her.

“Mrs. Dix is coming to London, I believe,” said Sypher.

Zora looked inquiringly at Septimus, who explained dis cursively.  Zora renounced Paris.  She would wait for Emmy.  For the time being the incident was closed.  Septimus, in his hospitality, offered tea.

“I’ll get it for you,” said Zora.  “It will be a good opportunity to speak sweetly to Wiggleswick.”

She swept out of the room; the two men lit cigarettes and smoked for a while in silence.  At last Sypher asked: 

“What made you send her the tail of the little dog?”

Septimus reddened, and ran two of the fingers of the hand holding the cigarette up his hair, and spilled half an inch of ash on his head.

“I broke the dog, you see,” he explained luminously, “I knocked it off the mantelpiece.  I’m always doing it.  When Emmy has a decent house I’ll invent something to keep dogs and things on mantelpieces.”

Sypher said:  “Do you know you’ve done me one of those services which one man rarely does for another.  I’ll never forget it to my dying day.  By bringing her to me you’ve saved my reason.  You’ve made me a different being.  I’m Clem Sypher—­but, by God you’re the Friend of Humanity.”

Septimus looked at him with the terrified expression of a mediaeval wrongdoer, writhing under an ecclesiastical curse.  He made abject apology.

“It was the only thing I could do,” said he.

“Of course it was.  And that’s why you did it.  I never dreamed when you told me to wait until I saw her before going mad or breaking my heart that you meant to send for her.  It has set me in front of a new universe.”