Septimus walked up and down the room deep in thought.  A spinster-looking lady in a cheap blouse and skirt, an inmate of the caravanserai, put her head through the door and, with a disapproving sniff at the occupants, retired.  At length Septimus broke the silence: 

“You said last night that you believed God sent me to you.  I believe so too.  So I’m not going to leave you.”

“But what can you do?” asked Emmy, ending the sentence on a hysterical note which brought tears and a fit of sobbing.  She buried her head in her arms on the sofa-end, and her young shoulders shook convulsively.  She was an odd mixture of bravado and baby helplessness.  To leave her to fight her terrible battle with the aid only of a theater dresser was an impossibility.  Septimus looked at her with mournful eyes, hating his futility.  Of what use was he to any God-created being?  Another man, strong and capable, any vital, deep-chested fellow that was passing along Southampton Row at that moment, would have known how to take her cares on his broad shoulders and ordain, with kind imperiousness, a course of action.  But he—­he could only clutch his fingers nervously and shuffle with his feet, which of itself must irritate a woman with nerves on edge.  He could do nothing.  He could suggest nothing save that he should follow her about like a sympathetic spaniel.  It was maddening.  He walked to the window and looked out into the unexhilarating street, all that was man in him in revolt against his ineffectuality.

Suddenly came the flash of inspiration, swift, illuminating, such as happened sometimes when the idea of a world-upsetting invention burst upon him with bewildering clearness; but this time more radiant, more intense than he had ever known before; it was almost an ecstasy.  He passed both hands feverishly through his hair till it could stand no higher.

“I have it!” he cried; and Archimedes could not have uttered his famous word with a greater thrill.

“Emmy, I have it!”

He stood before her gibbering with inspiration.  At his cry she raised a tear-stained face and regarded him amazedly.

“You have what?”

“The solution.  It is so simple, so easy.  Why shouldn’t we have run away together?”

“We did,” said Emmy.

“But really—­to get married.”

“Married?”

She started bolt upright on the sofa, the feminine ever on the defensive.

“Yes,” said Septimus quickly.  “Don’t you see?  If you will go through the form of marriage with me—­oh, just the form, you know—­and we both disappear abroad somewhere for a year—­I in one place and you in another, if you like—­then we can come back to Zora, nominally married, and—­and—­”

“And what?” asked Emmy, stonily.

“And then you can say you can’t live with me any longer.  You couldn’t stand me.  I don’t think any woman could.  Only Wiggleswick could put up with my ways.”