“Why are you so bent on educating me?” she asked.

“Because,” said he, “I am one of the few men of your acquaintance who doesn’t want to marry you.”

“Indeed?” said Zora sarcastically, yet hating herself for feeling a little pang of displeasure.  “May I ask why?”

“Because,” said he, “I’ve a wife and five children already.”

* * * * *

On the top of her matchmaking and her reflections on Truth in the guise of the Veiled Prophet of Khorasan, came Clem Sypher to take possession of his new house.  Since Zora had seen him in Monte Carlo he had been to New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, fighting the Jebusa Jones dragon in its lair.  He had written Zora stout dispatches during the campaign.  Here a victory.  There a defeat.  Everywhere a Napoleonic will to conquer—­but everywhere also an implied admission of the almost invulnerable strength of his enemy.

“I’m physically tired,” said he, on the first day of his arrival, spreading his large frame luxuriously among the cushions of Mrs. Oldrieve’s chintz-covered Chesterfield.  “I’m tired for the only time in my life.  I wanted you,” he added, with one of his quick, piercing looks.  “It’s a curious thing, but I’ve kept saying to myself for the last month, ’If I could only come into Zora Middlemist’s presence and drink in some of her vitality, I should be a new man.’  I’ve never wanted a human being before.  It’s strange, isn’t it?”

Zora came up to him, tea in hand, a pleasant smile on her face.

“The Nunsmere air will rest you,” she said demurely.

“I don’t think much of the air if you’re not in it.  It’s like whiskey-less soda water.”  He drew a long breath.  “My God!  It’s good to see you again.  You’re the one creature on this earth who believes in the Cure as I do myself.”

Zora glanced at him guiltily.  Her enthusiasm for the Cure as a religion was tepid.  In her heart she did not believe in it.  She had tried it a few weeks before on the sore head of a village baby, with disastrous results; then the mother had called in the doctor, who wrote out a simple prescription which healed the child immediately.  The only real evidence of its powers she had seen was on Septimus’s brown boots.  Humanity, however, forbade her to deny the faith with which Clem Sypher credited her; also a genuine feeling of admiration mingled with pity for the man.

“Do you find much scepticism about?” she asked.

“It’s lack of enthusiasm I complain of,” he replied.  “Instead of accepting it as the one heaven-sent remedy, people will use any other puffed and advertised stuff.  Chemists are even lukewarm.  A grain of mustard seed of faith among them would save me thousands of pounds a year.  Not that I want to roll in money, Mrs. Middlemist.  I’m not an avaricious man.  But a great business requires capital—­and to spend money merely in flogging the invertebrate is waste—­desperate waste.”