“Why?”

“My friend Hegisippe Cruchot gave you an idea in Paris—­about soldiers’ feet.  How is it developing?”

Sypher made a wry face.  “I found, my dear Dix, it was like your guns of large caliber.”  He rose and walked impatiently about the room.  “Don’t let us talk about the Cure, there’s a dear fellow.  I come down here to forget it.”

“Forget it?”

Septimus stared at him in amazement.

“Yes.  To clear my mind and brain of it.  To get a couple of nights’ sleep after the rest of the week’s nightmare.  The concern is going to hell as fast as it can, and”—­he stopped in front of Septimus and brought down his hands in a passionate gesture—­“I can’t believe it.  I can’t believe it!  What I’m going through God only knows.”

“I at least had no notion,” said Septimus.  “And I’ve been worrying you with my silly twaddle about babies and guns.”

“It’s a godsend for me to hear of anything save ruin and the breaking up of all that was dear to me in life.  It’s not like failure in an ordinary business.  It has been infinitely more than a business to me.  It has been a religion.  It is still.  That’s why my soul refuses to grasp facts and figures.”

He went on, feeling a relief in pouring out his heart to one who could understand.  To no one had he thus spoken.  With an expansive nature he had the strong man’s pride.  To the world in general he turned the conquering face of Clem Sypher, the Friend of Humanity, of Sypher’s Cure.  To Septimus alone had he shown the man in his desperate revolt against defeat.  The lines around his mouth deepened into lines of pain, and pain lay behind his clear eyes and in the knitting of his brows.

“I believed the Almighty had put an instrument for the relief of human suffering into my hands.  I dreamed great dreams.  I saw all the nations of the earth blessing me.  I know I was a damned fool.  So are you.  So is every visionary.  So are the apostles, the missionaries, the explorers—­all who dream great dreams—­all damned fools, but a glorious company all the same.  I’m not ashamed to belong to it.  But there comes a time when the apostle finds himself preaching to the empty winds, and the explorer discovers his El Dorado to be a barren island, and he either goes mad or breaks his heart, and which of the two I’m going to do I don’t know.  Perhaps both.”

“Zora Middlemist will be back soon,” said Septimus.  “She is coming by the White Star line, and she ought to be in Marseilles by the end of next week.”

“She writes me that she may winter in Egypt.  That is why she chose the White Star line,” said Sypher.

“Have you told her what you’ve told me?”

“No,” said Sypher, “and I never shall while there’s a hope left.  She knows it’s a fight.  But I tell her—­as I have told my damned fool of a soul—­that I shall conquer.  Would you like to go to her and say, ’I’m done—­I’m beaten’?  Besides, I’m not.”