nteresting," said Pawkins. "I'm afraid
prehistoric antiquity doesn't make my pulses beat faster."

"That's the advantage of it."

"One might just as well be a fossil oneself."

"Much better," said Pawkins, who had read Schopenhauer.

"You are not exhilarating to a depressed woman," said Zora with a laugh.

"I am sorry," he replied stiffly. "I was trying to entertain you."

He regarded her severely out of his one eye and edged away, as if he
repented having wasted his time over so futile an organism as a woman. But
her feminine magnetism drew him back.

"I'm rather glad you are going on to Alexandria," he remarked in a tone of
displeasure, and before she could reply he marched off to look after his
luggage.

Zora's eyes followed him until he disappeared, then she shrugged her
shoulders. Apparently one-eyed geologists were as unsafe as elementary
young Britons and opulent senators. She felt unfairly treated by
Providence. It was maddening to realize herself as of no use in the
universe except to attract the attention of the opposite sex. She clenched
her hands in impotent anger. There was no mission on earth which she could
fulfil. She thought enviously of Cousin Jane.

The steamer entered the harbor; the passengers for Marseilles landed, and
the mail was brought aboard. There was only one letter for Mrs. Middlemist.
It bore the Nunsmere postmark. She opened it and found the tail of the
little china dog.

She looked at it for a moment wonderingly as it lay absurdly curled in the
palm of her hand, and then she burst into tears. The thing was so
grotesquely trivial. It meant so much. It was a sign and a token falling,
as it were, from the sky into the midst of her despairing mood, rebuking
her, summoning her, declaring an unknown mission which she was bound to
execute. It lay in her hand like a bit of destiny, inexorable,
unquestionable, silently compelling her forthwith to the human soul that
stood in great need of her. Fate had granted the wish she had expressed to
the one-eyed geologist. She landed at Marseilles, and sped homeward by the
night train, her heart torn with anxiety for Septimus.

All night long the rhythmic clatter of the train shaped itself into the
burden of her words to him: "If ever you want me badly, send me the tail,
and I'll come to you from any distance." She had spoken then half
jestingly, all tenderly. That evening she had loved him "in a sort of way,"
and now that he had sent for her,