eakfasting a few tables off, asked for the name of the debauchee, and
resolved to write to the Committee. Never in the club's history had a
member breakfasted in dress clothes--and in such disreputably disheveled
dress clothes! Such dissolute mohocks were a stumbling-block and an
offense, and the gaunt member, who had prided himself on going by clockwork
all his life, felt his machinery in some way dislocated by the spectacle.
But Septimus ate his food unconcernedly, and afterwards, mounting to the
library, threw himself into a chair before the fire and slept the sleep of
the depraved till Wiggleswick arrived with his clothes. Then, having
effected an outward semblance of decency, he went to the Ravenswood Hotel.
Wiggleswick he sent back to Nunsmere.

Emmy entered the prim drawing-room where he had been waiting for her, the
picture of pretty flower-like misery, her delicate cheeks white, a hunted
look in her baby eyes. A great pang of pity went through the man, hurting
him physically. She gave him a limp hand, and sat down on a saddle-bag
sofa, while he stood hesitatingly before her, balancing himself first on
one leg and then on the other.

"Have you had anything to eat?"

Emmy nodded.

"Have you slept?"

"That's a thing I shall never do again," she said querulously. "How can you
ask?"

"If you don't sleep, you'll get ill and die," said Septimus.

"So much the better," she replied.

"I wish I could help you. I do wish I could help you."

"No one can help me. Least of all you. What could a man do in any case?
And, as for you, my poor Septimus, you want as much taking care of as I
do."

The depreciatory tone did not sting him as it would have done another man,
for he knew his incapacity. He had also gone through the memory of Moses's
rod the night before.

"I wonder whether Wiggleswick could be of any use?" he said, more
brightly.

Emmy laughed dismally. Wiggleswick! To no other mind but Septimus's could
such a suggestion present itself.

"Then what's to be done?"

"I don't know," said Emmy.

They looked at each other blankly, two children face to face with one of
the most terrible of modern social problems, aghast at their powerlessness
to grapple with it. It is a situation which wrings the souls of the strong
with an agony worse than death. It crushes the weak, or drives them mad,
and often brings them, fragile wisps of human semblance, into the criminal
dock. Shame, disgrace, social pariahdom; unut