“You must never explain,” he agreed, sagely.  “It would undo everything.  I suppose things are easy, after all, when you’ve set your mind on them—­or get some chap that knows everything to tell you how to do them—­and there’s lots of fellows about that know everything—­solicitors and so forth.  There’s the man who told me about a Registrar.  See how easy it was.  Where would you like to go?”

“Anywhere out of England.”  She shuddered.  “Take me to Paris first.  We can go on from there anywhere we like.”

“Certainly,” said Septimus, and he hailed a hansom.

* * * * *

Thus it fell out that the strangely married pair kept together during the long months that followed.  Emmy’s flat in London had been rented furnished.  The maid Edith had vanished, after the manner of many of her kind, into ancillary space.  The theater and all it signified to Emmy became a past dream.  Her inner world was tragical enough, poor child.  Her outer world was Septimus.  In Paris, as she shrank from meeting possible acquaintances, he found her a furnished appartement in the Boulevard Raspail, while he perched in a little hotel close by.  The finding of the appartement was an illustration of his newly invented, optimistic theory of getting things done.

He came back to the hotel where he had provisionally lodged her and informed her of his discovery.  She naturally asked him how he had found it.

“A soldier told me,” he said.

“A soldier?”

“Yes.  He had great baggy red trousers and a sash around his waist and a short blue jacket braided with red and a fez with a tassel and a shaven head.  He saved me from being run over by a cab.”

Emmy shivered.  “Oh, don’t talk of it in that calm way—­suppose you had been killed!”

“I suppose the Zouave would have buried me—­he’s such a helpful creature, you know.  He’s been in Algiers.  He says I ought to go there.  His name is Hegisippe Cruchot.”

“But what about the flat?” asked Emmy.

“Oh, you see, I fell down in front of the cab and he dragged me away and brushed me down with a waiter’s napkin—­there was a cafe within a yard or two.  And then I asked him to have a drink and gave him a cigarette.  He drank absinthe, without water, and then I began to explain to him an idea for an invention which occurred to me to prevent people from being run over by cabs, and he was quite interested.  I’ll show you—­”

“You won’t,” said Emmy, with a laugh.  She had her lighter moments.  “You’ll do no such thing—­not until you’ve told me about the flat.”

“Oh! the flat,” said Septimus in a disappointed tone, as if it were a secondary matter altogether.  “I gave him another absinthe and we became so friendly that I told him that I wanted a flat and didn’t in the least know how to set about finding one.  It turned out that there was an appartement vacant in the house of which his mother is concierge.  He took me along to see it, and introduced me to Madame, his mother.  He has also got an aunt who can cook.”