“Dear me,” said Septimus.  “What shall I do?  Shall I shoot him?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said seriously.  “It’s serious.  I’d be glad if you’d kindly walk up and down a little with me.”

“With pleasure.”  They strolled away together.  “But I am serious.  If you wanted me to shoot him I’d do it.  I’d do anything in the world for you.  I’ve got a revolver in my room.”

She laughed, disclaiming desire for supreme vengeance.

“I only want to show the wretch that I am not a helpless woman,” she observed, with the bewildering illogic of the sex.  And as she passed by the offender she smiled down at her companion with all the sweetness of intimacy and asked him why he carried a revolver.  She did not point the offender out, be it remarked, to the bloodthirsty Septimus.

“It belongs to Wiggleswick,” he replied in answer to her question.  “I promised to take care of it for him.”

“What does Wiggleswick do when you are away?”

“He reads the police reports.  I take in Reynolds and the News of the World and the illustrated Police News for him, and he cuts them out and gums them in a scrap book.  But I think I’m happier without Wiggleswick.  He interferes with my guns.”

“By the way,” said Zora, “you talked about guns the other evening.  What have you got to do with guns?”

He looked at her in a scared way out of the corner of his eye, child-fashion, as though to make sure she was loyal and worthy of confidence, and then he said: 

“I invent ’em.  I have written a treatise on guns of large caliber.”

“Really?” cried Zora, taken by surprise.  She had not credited him with so serious a vocation.  “Do tell me something about it.”

“Not now,” he pleaded.  “Some other time.  I’d have to sit down with paper and pencil and draw diagrams.  I’m afraid you wouldn’t like it.  Wiggleswick doesn’t.  It bores him.  You must be born with machinery in your blood.  Sometimes it’s uncomfortable.”

“To have cogwheels instead of corpuscles must be trying,” said Zora flippantly.

“Very,” said he.  “The great thing is to keep them clear of the heart.”

“What do you mean?” she asked quickly.

“Whatever one does or tries to do, one should insist on remaining human.  It’s good to be human, isn’t it?  I once knew a man who was just a complicated mechanism of brain encased in a body.  His heart didn’t beat; it clicked and whirred.  It caused the death of the most perfect woman in the world.”

He looked dreamily into the blue ether between sea and sky.  Zora felt strangely drawn to him.

“Who was it?” she asked softly.

“My mother,” said he.

They had paused in their stroll, and were leaning over the parapet above the railway line.  After a few moments’ silence he added, with a faint smile:—­

“That’s why I try hard to keep myself human—­so that, if a woman should ever care for me, I shouldn’t hurt her.”