Septimus

e air. The leaves of the oaks that lined the drive fell slowly under the breath of a southwest wind, and joine

him, of dripping trees and of evergreens on the lawn trying to make the best of it in forlorn bravery. Heaven had ordained that the earth should be fair and Sypher's Cure invincible. Something was curiously wrong in the execution of Heaven's decrees. He looked again at the preposterous statement, knitting his brow. Surely this was so

thedral or Westminster Abbey, secure outside pages of

e friends to luncheon-three live people. A gathering of pale-souled folk would have converted the house into a chilly barn. They would warm it with the glow of friendship. Mrs. Middlemist, looking like a rose in June, had already irradiated the wan November garden. Miss Oldrieve h

f jollity over the oak sideboard. Everything was too new, too ordered, too unindividual; but Sypher loved it, especially the high-art wall-paper and restless frieze. Zora, a woman of instinctive taste, who, if she bought a bedroom water-bottle, managed to identify it with her own personality, professed her admiration with a w

were out of earshot of the others. He had already offered to go to Naples and bring back Mordaun

replied impatiently. "I want

n kitten playing with a bit of paper, and guided by one of his queer intuitions he went and

he cried, and kissed

eon, and laughed when he told her that he c

scratches, "she produces on the human epidermis

uld let a kitten scratch his hand in that

her, when Septimus and he joined

"want houses with lawns reaching down to the side of the river or the Menai Straits or Windermere. I

use was untenanted

hrough this screen, the lawn and the line of railway and the dreamy, undulating Surrey

claimed Sypher eagerly. "

an might do who had built himself a new wonder house. And then on three astonished pairs of eyes burs

ER'S

r. Friend

VE H

shows that Sypher's Cure isn't a quack thing run by a commercial company, but the possession of a man who has a house, who lives in the very house you can see through the trees

spite of her own preoccupation, suppressed a giggle. There wa

he trains as they passed, I could invent a machine for throwing littl

ng. "Come and show me

e line, where she spoke with mirthful disrespect of

t?" he asked at l

polite lady you've asked

and my help

"I must say that I don't like it. I hate it. I

Zora was another. He looked at them both

hy?" h

and did not convict him, as she would have done another man, of blatant vulgarity. Yet she felt preposterously pained. Why

nt everyone to respect you as I do. You see the

the board," said Syp

mpression of some one quite different-a horrid creature who would sell his self-respect for money. Oh, do

do about i

wn at once,

ard was my sole reason

said gently, "but I ca

e board, and then turned. "Let u

bbery at the side of the house, he gravely pushed aside a wet,

th me for speakin

it above all things? It cost you a lot to say that to me. You're right. I suppose I've lost sense of myself in the Cure. When I think of it, I seem just to be the machine t

She gave him hers an

up the house now that i

u wish

e I to do

to do with my success. Sooner than forfeit your respect I would set fire to every stick

ame little devil that makes a young wife ask her devoted husband which of the two he would save if she and his mother were drowning. It is the little devil that is responsible for infinite mendacity on the part of men. "Have you ever said that to another woman?" No;

ion the little de

he Cure for nothing in the wid

devil asked her whether she was quite sure; whereupon she hit him smartly ov

ined by Emmy

tter, "if I cut a hole a foot square in

urned Sypher. "Mrs. Middlemist ha

e satisfaction in the blaze that roared up the chimney than she could explain to her mother; perhaps more than she could explain to herself. Septimus had first taught her the pleasantness of power. But that was nothing to th

it into Clem Sypher. Zora deprecated the personal bearing of the slang metaph

you take all this trouble

eplied Zora, looking up fro

table and watched with hungry eyes, but the only letter that had come for her had be

d. "There was a time when you didn't want to see them or speak to them or

possible lovers and men as staunch frien

piece of to

're beasts,"

heaven

n't know.

of the woman who fears she has said too m

d me a part in his new production and

kitten's pretty but unimportant likes, dislikes, habits, occupations, and aspirations. To regard her as being under the shadow of a woman's tragedy had never entered her head. The kitten playing Antigone, Ophelia, or such like distressed heroines, in awful, grim earnest is not a conception that readi

e air, and peach forests, and all the wonders of that wonderland. And Emmy stirred her tea, too, in an abs