“I look to you to prevent this story going any further.”

“I’ve already made it my duty to do so,” said Rattenden.

Sypher helped his guest to wine.

“I hope you like this Roederer,” said he.  “It’s the only exquisite wine in the club, and unfortunately there are not more than a few bottles left.  I had seven dozen of the same cuvee in my cellar at Priory Park—­if anything, in better condition.  I had to sell it with the rest of the things when I gave up the house.  It went to my heart.  Champagne is the only wine I understand.  There was a time when it stood as a symbol to me of the unattainable.  Now that I can drink it when I will, I know that all the laws of philosophy forbid its having any attraction for me.  Thank heaven I’m not dyspeptic enough in soul to be a philosopher and I’m grateful for my aspirations.  I cultivated my taste for champagne out of sheer gratitude.”

“Any wise man,” said Rattenden, “can realize his dreams.  It takes something much higher than wisdom to enjoy the realization.”

“What is that?”

“The heart of a child,” said Rattenden.  He smiled in his inscrutable way behind his thick lenses, and sipped his champagne.  “Truly a delicious wine,” said he.

Sypher said good-by to his guest on the steps of the club, and walked home to his new chambers in St. James’s deep in thought.  For the first time since his acquaintance with Rattenden, he was glad to part from him.  He had a great need of solitude.  It came to him almost as a shock to realize that things were happening in the world round about him quite as heroic, in the eyes of the High Gods, as the battle between Sypher’s Cure and Jebusa Jones’s Cuticle Remedy.  The curtain of life had been lifted, and a flash of its inner mysteries had been revealed.  His eyes still were dazed.  But he had received the gift of vision.  He had seen beyond doubt or question the heart of Septimus Dix.  He knew what he had done, why he had done it.

Zora Middlemist had passed Septimus by with her magnificent head in the air.  But he was not one of the little men.

“By God, he is not!” he cried aloud, and the cry came from his depths.

Zora Middlemist had passed him, Clem Sypher, by with her magnificent head in the air.

He let himself into his chambers; they struck him as being chill and lonely, the casual, uncared-for hiding-place of one of the little men.  He stirred the fire, almost afraid to disturb the cold silence by the rattle of the poker against the bars of the grate.  His slippers were set in readiness on the hearth-rug, and the machine who valeted him had fitted them with boot-trees.  He put them on, and unlocking his desk, took out the letter which he had received that morning from Zora.

“For you,” she wrote, “I want victory all along the line—­the apotheosis of Sypher’s Cure on Earth.  For myself, I don’t know what I want.  I wish you would tell me.”