If it were a case in which a man’s aid were necessary, there stood Sypher, a great pillar of comfort.  Unconsciously she compared him with the man with whom she had come in contact during her travels—­and she had met many of great charm and strength and knowledge.  For some strange reason which she could not analyze, he towered above them all, though in each separate quality of character others whom she could name surpassed him far.  She knew his faults, and in her lofty way smiled at them.  Her character as goddess or guardian angel or fairy patroness of the Cure she had assumed with the graciousness of a grown-up lady playing charades at a children’s party.  His occasional lapses from the traditions of her class jarred on her fine susceptibilities.  Yet there, in spite of all, he stood rooted in her life, a fact, a puzzle, a pride and a consolation.  The other men paled into unimportant ghosts before him, and strayed shadowy through the limbo of her mind.  Till now she had not realized it.  Septimus, however, had always dwelt in her heart like a stray dog whom she had rescued from vagrancy.  He did not count as a man.  Sypher did.  Thus during the long, tedious hours of the journey home the two were curiously mingled in her anxious conjectures, and she had no doubt that Sypher and herself, the strong and masterful, would come to the deliverance of the weak.

* * * * *

Septimus, who had received a telegram from Marseilles, waited for her train at Victoria.  In order to insure being in time he had arrived a couple of hours too soon, and patiently wandered about the station.  Now and then he stopped before the engines of trains at rest, fascinated, as he always was, by perfect mechanism.  A driver, dismounting from the cab, and seeing him lost in admiration of the engine, passed him a civil word, to which Septimus, always courteous, replied.  They talked further.

“I see you’re an engineer, sir,” said the driver, who found himself in conversation with an appreciative expert.

“My father was,” said Septimus.  “But I could never get up in time for my examinations.  Examinations seem so silly.  Why should you tell a set of men what they know already?”

The grimy driver expressed the opinion that examinations were necessary.  He who spoke had passed them.

“I suppose you can get up at any time,” Septimus remarked enviously.  “Somebody ought to invent a machine for those who can’t.”

“You only want an alarm-clock,” said the driver.

Septimus shook his head.  “They’re no good.  I tried one once, but it made such a dreadful noise that I threw a boot at it.”

“Did that stop it?”

“No,” murmured Septimus.  “The boot hit another clock on the mantelpiece, a Louis Quinze clock, and spoiled it.  I did get up, but I found the method too expensive, so I never tried it again.”

The engine of an outgoing train blew off steam, and the resounding din deafened the station.  Septimus held his hands to his ears.  The driver grinned.