“A nurse I once had married a bombardier,” said he.

Wiggleswick entered with the haddock and other breakfast appurtenances, and while Septimus ate his morning meal Sypher smoked and talked and looked through the pages of the Treatise.  The lamps lit and the curtains drawn, the room had a cosier appearance than by day.  Sypher stretched himself comfortably before the fire.

“I’m not in the way, am I?”

“Good heavens, no!” said Septimus.  “I was just thinking how pleasant it was.  I’ve not had a man inside my rooms since I was up at Cambridge—­and then they didn’t come often, except to rag.”

“What did they do?”

Septimus narrated the burnt umbrella episode and other social experiences.

“So that when a man comes to see me who does not throw my things about, he is doubly welcome,” he explained.  “Besides,” he added, after a drink of coffee, “we said something in Monte Carlo about being friends.”

“We did,” said Sypher, “and I’m glad you’ve not forgotten it.  I’m so much the Friend of Humanity in the bulk that I’ve somehow been careless as to the individual.”

“Have a drink,” said Septimus, filling his after-breakfast pipe.

The pistol shot brought Wiggleswick, who, in his turn, brought whiskey and soda, and the two friends finished the afternoon in great amity.  Before taking his departure Sypher asked whether he might read through the proofs of the gun book at home.

“I think I know enough of machinery and mathematics to understand what you’re driving at, and I should like to examine these guns of yours.  You think they are going to whip creation?”

“They’ll make warfare too dangerous to be carried on.  At present, however, I’m more interested in my railway carriages.”

“Which will make railway traveling too dangerous to be carried on!” laughed Sypher, extending his hand.  “Good-by.”

When he had gone, Septimus mused for some time in happy contentment over his pipe.  He asked very little of the world, and oddly enough the world rewarded his modesty by giving him more than he asked for.  To-day he had seen Sypher in a new mood, sympathetic, unegotistical, non-robustious, and he felt gratified at having won a man’s friendship.  It was an addition to his few anchorages in life.  Then, in a couple of hours he would sun himself in the smiles of his adored mistress, and listen to the prattle of his other friend, Emmy.  Mrs. Oldrieve would be knitting by the lamp, and probably he would hold her wool, drop it, and be scolded as if he were a member of the family; all of which was a very gracious thing to the sensitive, lonely man, warming his heart and expanding his nature.  It filled his head with dreams:  of a woman dwelling by right in this house of his, and making the air fragrant by her presence.  But as the woman—­although he tried his utmost to prevent it and to conjure up the form of a totally different type—­took the shape