“It’s me, in flesh and blood—­you can touch for yourself—­and my sudden appearance is the simplest thing in the world.”

“But I thought you were going to winter in Egypt?”

“So did I, until I reached Marseilles.  This is how it was.”

She told him of the tail of the little china dog, and of her talk with Septimus the night before.

“So I came to you,” she concluded, “as soon as I decently could, this morning.”

“And I owe you to Septimus,” he said.

“Ah, I know!  You ought to have owed me to yourself,” she cried, misunderstanding him.  “If I had known things were so terrible with you I would have come.  I would, really.  But I was misled by your letters.  They were so hopeful.  Don’t reproach me.”

“Reproach you!  You who have given this crazy fellow so much!  You who come to me all sweetness and graciousness, with heaven in your eyes, after having been dragged across Europe and made to sacrifice your winter of sunshine, just for my sake!  Ah, no!  It’s myself that I reproach.”

“For what?” she asked.

“For being a fool, a crazy, blatant, self-centered fool My God!” he exclaimed, smiting the arm of his chair as a new view of things suddenly occurred to him.  “How can you sit there—­how have you suffered me these two years—­without despising me?  How is it that I haven’t been the mock and byword of Europe?  I must have been!”

He rose and walked about the room in great agitation.

“These things have all come crowding up together.  One can’t realize everything at once.  ‘Clem Sypher, Friend of Humanity!’ How they must have jeered behind my back if they thought me sincere!  How they must have despised me if they thought me nothing but an advertising quack!  Zora Middlemist, for heaven’s sake tell me what you have thought of me.  What have you taken me for—­a madman or a charlatan?”

“It is you that must tell me what has happened,” said Zora earnestly.  “I don’t know.  Septimus gave me to understand that the Cure had failed.  He’s never clear about anything in his own mind, and he’s worse when he tries to explain it to others.”

“Septimus,” said Sypher, “is one of the children of God.”

“But he’s a little bit incoherent on earth,” she rejoined, with a smile.  “What has really happened?”

Sypher drew a long breath and pulled himself up.

“I’m on the verge of a collapse.  The Cure hasn’t paid for the last two years.  I hoped against hope.  I flung thousands and thousands into the concern.  The Jebusa Jones people and others out-advertised me, out-manoeuvered me at every turn.  Now every bit of capital is gone, and I can’t raise any more.  I must go under.”

Zora began, “I have a fairly large fortune—­”

He checked her with a gesture, and looked at her clear and full.

“God bless you,” he said.  “My heart didn’t lie to me at Monte Carlo when it told me that you were a great-souled woman.  Tell me.  Have you ever believed in the Cure in the sense that I believed in it?”