He swerved as if he had received a blow and sank into his office chair, and turned his eyes from her to the ground, and sat stunned with joy and wonder and misery.  He put out a hand blindly, and she took it, standing by his side.  He knew now what he wanted.  He wanted her, the woman.  He wanted her voice in his ears, her kiss on his lips, her dear self in his arms.  He wanted her welcome as he entered his house, her heart, her soul, her mind, her body, everything that was hers.  He loved her for herself, passionately, overwhelmingly, after the simple way of men.  He had raised his eyes from the deeps of hell, and in a flash she was revealed to him—­incarnate heaven.

He felt the touch of her gloved hand on his, and it sent a thrill through his veins which almost hurt, as the newly coursing blood hurts the man that has been revived from torpor.  The mistiness that serves a strong man for tears clouded his sight.  He had longed for her; she had come.  From their first meeting he had recognized, with the visionary’s glimpse of the spiritual, that she was the woman of women appointed unto him for help and comfort.  But then the visionary had eclipsed the man.  Destiny had naught to do with him but as the instrument for the universal spreading of the Cure.  The Cure was his life.  The woman appointed unto him was appointed unto the Cure equally with himself.  He had violently credited her with his insane faith.  He had craved her presence as a mystical influence that in some way would paralyze the Jebusa Jones Dragon and give him supernatural strength to fight.  He had striven with all his power to keep her radiant like a star, while his own faith lay dying.

He had been a fool.  All the time it was the sheer woman that had held him, the sheer man.  And yet had not destiny fulfilled itself with a splendid irony in sending her to him then, in that moment of his utter anguish, of the utter annihilation of the fantastic faith whereby he had lived for years?  From the first he had been right, though with a magnificent lunacy.  It was she, in very truth, who had been destined to slay his dragon.  It was dead now, a vulgar, slimy monster, incapable of hurt, slain by the lightning flash of love, when his eyes met hers, a moment or two ago.  In a confused way he realized this.  He repeated mechanically: 

“What a fool I’ve been!  What a fool I’ve been!”

“Why?” asked Zora, who did not understand.

“Because—­” he began, and then he stopped, finding no words.  “I wonder whether God sent you?”

“I’m afraid it was only Septimus,” she said with a smile.

“Septimus?”

He was startled.  What could Septimus have to do with her coming?  He rose again, and focusing his whirling senses on conventional things, wheeled an armchair to the fire, and led her to it, and took his seat near her in his office chair.

“Forgive me,” he said, “but your coming seemed supernatural.  I was dazed by the wonderful sight of you.  Perhaps it’s not you, after all.  I may be going mad and have hallucinations.  Tell me that it’s really you.”