“So are all the dreams ever dreamed by man.  I shouldn’t like to pass my life without dreams, Zora.  I could give up tobacco and alcohol and clean collars and servants, and everything you could think of—­but not dreams.  Without them the earth is just a sort of backyard of a place.”

“And with them?” said Zora.

“An infinite garden.”

“I’m afraid you’ll be disillusioned over poor Septimus,” she said, “but I shouldn’t like you to take up anything you didn’t believe in.  What would be quite honest in another man wouldn’t be honest in you.”

“That means,” said Sypher, “you wouldn’t like to see me going on dealing in quack medicines?”

Zora flushed red.

“It was at the back of my mind,” she confessed.  “But I did put my thoughts into the form of a compliment.”

“Zora,” said he, “if I fell below what I want to appear in your eyes, I should lose the dearest dream of all.”

In the evening came Septimus to Penton Court to discuss the new scheme with Sypher.  Wiggleswick, with the fear of Zora heavy upon him, had laid out his master’s dinner suit, and Septimus had meekly put it on.  He had also dined in a Christian fashion, for the old villain could cook a plain dinner creditably when he chose.  Septimus proclaimed the regeneration of his body servant as one of the innumerable debts he owed to Zora.

“Why do you repay them to me?” asked Sypher.

Then he rose, laughed into the distressed face, and put both his hands on Septimus’s shoulders.

“No, don’t try to answer.  I know more about you than you can possibly conceive, and to me you’re transparency itself.  But you see that I can’t accept your patents, don’t you?”

“I shall never do anything with them.”

“Have you tried?”

“No.”

“Then I will.  It will be a partnership between my business knowledge and energy and your brains.  That will be right and honorable for the two of us.”

Septimus yielded.  “If both you and Zora think so, it must be” he said.  But in his heart he was disappointed.

* * * * *

A few days afterwards Shuttleworth came into Sypher’s office, with an expression of cheerfulness on his dismal countenance.

“Can I have a few moments with you, sir?”

Sypher bade him be seated.  Since his defection to the enemy, Shuttleworth had avoided his chief as much as possible, the excess of sorrow over anger in the latter’s demeanor toward him being hard to bear.  He had slunk about, not daring to meet his eyes.  This morning, however, he reeked of conscious virtue.

“I have a proposal to put before you, with which I think you’ll be pleased,” said he.

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Sypher.

“I’m proud to say,” continued Shuttleworth, “that it was my suggestion, and that I’ve carried it through.  I was anxious to show you that I wasn’t ungrateful for all your past kindnesses, and my leaving you was not as disloyal as you may have thought.”