“Zora, do you mean that?”

She nodded, fluttered a glance at him, and put out her free hand to claim a few moments’ grace.

“I left you to look for a mission in life.  I’ve come back and found it at the place I started from.  It’s a big mission, for it means being a mate to a big man.  But if you will let me try, I’ll do my best.”

Sypher thrust away the protecting hand.

“You can talk afterwards,” he said.

Thus did Zora come to the knowledge of things real.  When the gates were opened, she walked in with a tread not wanting in magnificence.  She made the great surrender, which is woman’s greatest victory, very proudly, very humbly, very deliciously.  She had her greatnesses.

She freed herself, flushed and trembling, throbbing with a strange happiness that caught her breath.  This time she believed Nature, and laughed with her in her heart in close companionship.  She was mere woman after all, with no mission in life but the accomplishment of her womanhood, and she gloried in the knowledge.  This was exceedingly good for her.  Sypher regarded her with shining eyes as if she had been an immortal vesting herself in human clay for divine love of him; and this was exceedingly good for Sypher.  After much hyperbole they descended to kindly commonplace.

“But I don’t see now,” he cried, “how I can ask you to marry me.  I don’t even know how I’m to earn my living.”

“There are Septimus’s inventions.  Have you lost your faith in them?”

He cried with sudden enthusiasm, as who should say, if an Immortal has faith in them, then indeed must they be divine: 

“Do you believe in them now?”

“Utterly.  I’ve grown superstitious, too.  Wherever we turn there is Septimus.  He has raised Emmy from hell to heaven.  He has brought us two together.  He is our guardian angel.  He’ll never fail us.  Oh, Clem, thank heaven,” she exclaimed fervently, “I’ve got something to believe in at last.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile the guardian angel, entirely unconscious of apotheosis, sat in the little flat in Chelsea blissfully eating crumpets over which Emmy had spread the preposterous amount of butter which proceeds from an overflowing heart.  She knelt on the hearth rug watching him adoringly as if he were a hierophant eating sacramental wafer.  They talked of the future.  He mentioned the nice houses he had seen in Berkeley Square.

“Berkeley Square would be very charming,” said Emmy, “but it would mean carriages and motor-cars and powdered footmen and Ascot and balls and dinner parties and presentations at Court.  You would be just in your element, wouldn’t you, dear?”

She laughed and laid her happy head on his knee.

“No, dear.  If we want to have a fling together, you and I, in London, let us keep on this flat as a pied-a-terre.  But let us live at Nunsmere.  The house is quite big enough, and if it isn’t you can always add on a bit at the cost of a month’s rent in Berkeley Square.  Wouldn’t you prefer to live at Nunsmere?”