else.  It was going to smash Jebusa Jones’s Cuticle Remedy to the shreds of its ointment boxes.  The deepening vertical line between the man’s brows she did not notice, nor did she interpret the wistful look in his eyes when he claimed her help.  She was tired of the Cure and the Remedy and Sypher’s fantastic need of her as ally.  She wanted Life, real, quivering human Life.  It was certainly not to be found in Nunsmere, where faded lives were laid away in lavender.  For sheer sensations she began to tolerate the cynical analysis of the Literary Man from London.  She must go forth on her journeyings again.  She had already toyed with the idea when, with Septimus’s aid, she had mapped out voyages round the world.  Now she must follow it in strenuous earnest.  The Callenders had cabled her an invitation to come out at once to Los Angeles.  She cabled back an acceptance.

“So you’re going away from me?” said Sypher, when she announced her departure.

There was a hint of reproach in his voice which she resented.

“You told me in Monte Carlo that I ought to have a mission in life.  I can’t find it here, so I’m going to seek one in California.  What happens in this Sleepy Hollow of a place that a live woman can concern herself with?”

“There’s Sypher’s Cure—­”

“My dear Mr. Sypher!” she laughed protestingly.

“Oh,” said he, “you are helping it on more than you imagine.  I’m going through a rough time, but with you behind me, as I told you before, I know I shall win.  If I turn my head round, when I’m sitting at my desk, I have a kind of fleeting vision of you hovering over my chair.  It puts heart and soul into me, and gives me courage to make desperate ventures.”

“As I’m only there in the spirit, it doesn’t matter whether the bodily I is in Nunsmere or Los Angeles.”

“How can I tell?” said he, with one of his swift, clear glances.  “I meet you in the body every week and carry back your spirit with me.  Zora Middlemist,” he added abruptly, after a pause, “I implore you not to leave me.”

He leaned his arm on the mantelpiece from which Septimus had knocked the little china dog, and looked down earnestly at her, as she sat on the chintz-covered sofa behind the tea-table.  At her back was the long casement window, and the last gleams of the wintry sun caught her hair.  To the man’s visionary fancy they formed an aureole.

“Don’t go, Zora.”

She was silent for a long, long time, as if held by the spell of the man’s pleading.  Her face softened adorably and a tenderness came into the eyes which he could not see.  A mysterious power seemed to be lifting her towards him.  It was a new sensation, pleasurable, like floating down a stream with the water murmuring in her ears.  Then, suddenly, as if startled to vivid consciousness out of a dream, she awakened, furiously indignant.

“Why shouldn’t I go?  Tell me once and for all, why?”