any more than the painter shows the anatomy.  Analyzing thus the imaginary woman, one forms a habit of analyzing the real woman in whom one takes an interest—­or rather one does it unconsciously.”  He paused.  “I told you it was rather delicate.  You see what I’m trying to get at?  Zora Middlemist is driven round the earth like Io by the gadfly of her temperament.  She’s seeking the Beauty or Meaning or Fulfilment, or whatever she chooses to call it, of Life.  What she’s really looking for is Love.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Sypher.

Rattenden shrugged his shoulders.  “It’s true all the same.  But in her case it’s the great love—­the big thing for the big man—­the gorgeous tropical sunshine in which all the splendor of her can develop.  No little man will move her.  She draws them all round her—­that type has an irresistible atmosphere—­but she passes them by with her magnificent head in the air.  She is looking all the time for the big man.  The pathetic comedy of it is that she is as innocent and as unconscious of the object of her search as the flower that opens its heart to the bee bearing the pollen on its wings.  I’m not infallible as a general rule.  In this case I am.”

He hastened to consume his soup which had got cold during his harangue.

“You’ve mixed much with women and studied them,” said Sypher.  “I haven’t.  I was engaged to a girl once, but it was a tepid affair.  She broke it off because it was much more vital to me to work in my laboratory than to hold her hand in her mother’s parlor.  No doubt she was right.  This was in the early days when I was experimenting with the Cure.  Since then I’ve been a man of one idea.  It has absorbed all my soul and energies, so that I’ve had none to spare for women.  Here and there, of course—­”

“I know.  The trifling things.  They are part of the banquet of life.  One eats and forgets.”

Sypher glanced at him and nodded his appreciation of the Literary Man’s neat way of putting things.  But he did not reply.  He ate his fish in silence, hardly tasting it, his mind far away following Zora Middlemist across the seas.  A horrible, jealous hatred of the big man for whom she sought sprang up in his heart.  His pink face flushed red.

“This sole bonne femme is excellent,” said Rattenden.

Sypher started in confusion, and praised the chef, and talked gastronomy while his thoughts were with Zora.  He remembered the confession of Septimus Dix in Paris.  Septimus had been caught in the irresistible atmosphere.  He loved her, but he was one of the little men and she had passed him by with her magnificent head in the air.  The gastronomic talk languished.  Presently Rattenden said: 

“One of the feminine phenomena that has puzzled me most of late has been the marriage of her sister to Septimus Dix.”

Sypher laid down his knife and fork.

“How extraordinary that you should mention it!  He was in my mind as you spoke.”