“I can’t stand that noise,” Septimus explained when it was over.  “Once I tried to work out an invention for modifying it.  It was a kind of combination between a gramaphone and an orchestrion.  You stuck it inside somewhere, and instead of the awful screech a piece of music would come out of the funnel.  In fact, it might have gone on playing all the time the train was in motion.  It would have been so cheery for the drivers, wouldn’t it?”

The unimaginative mechanic whose wits were scattered by this fantastic proposition used his bit of cotton waste as a handkerchief, and remarked with vague politeness that it was a pity the gentleman was not an engineer.  But Septimus deprecated the compliment.  He looked wistfully up at the girders of the glass roof and spoke in his gentle, tired voice.

“You see,” he concluded, “if I had been in practice as an engineer I should never have designed machinery in the orthodox way.  I should have always put in little things of my own—­and then God knows what would have happened.”

He brought his eyes to earth with a wan smile, but his companion had vanished.  A crowd had filled the suburban platform at the end of which he stood, and in a few moments the train clattered off.  Then, remembering that he was hungry, he went to the refreshment-room, where, at the suggestion of the barmaid, he regaled himself on two hard-boiled eggs and a glass of sherry.  The meal over, he loitered palely about the busy station, jostled by frantic gentlemen in silk hats rushing to catch suburban trains, and watched grimly by a policeman who suspected a pocket-picking soul beneath his guileless exterior.

At last, by especial grace of heaven, he found himself on the platform where the custom-house barrier and the long line of waiting porters heralded the approach of the continental train.  Now that only a few moments separated him from Zora, his heart grew cold with suspense.  He had not seen her since the night of Emmy’s fainting fit.  Her letters, though kind, had made clear to him her royal displeasure at his unceremonious marriage.  For the first time he would look into her gold-flecked eyes out of a disingenuous soul.  Would she surprise his guilty secret?  It was the only thing he feared in a bewildering world.

The train came in, and as her carriage flashed by Zora saw him on the platform with his hat off, passing his fingers nervously through his Struwel Peter hair.  The touch of the familiar welcoming her brought moisture to her eyes.  As soon as the train stopped she alighted, and leaving Turner (who had accompanied her on the pilgrimage, and from Dover had breathed fervent thanks to Heaven that at last she was back in the land of her fathers) to look after her luggage, she walked down the platform to meet him.