oes that," said Septimus, as if struck by a luminous idea, "I
suppose he asks the girl to marry him."

"But we are married already," she cried joyously.

"Dear me," said Septimus, "so we are. I forgot. It's very puzzling, isn't
it? I think, if you don't mind, I'll kiss you again."

CHAPTER XXIII

Zora went straight back to her hotel sitting-room. There, without taking
off her hat or furs, she wrote a swift, long letter to Clem Sypher, and
summoning the waiter, ordered him to post it at once. When he had gone she
reflected for a few moments and sent off a telegram. After a further brief
period of reflection she went down-stairs and rang up Sypher's office on
the telephone.

The mere man would have tried the telephone first, then sent the telegram,
and after that the explanatory letter. Woman has her own way of doing
things.

Sypher was in. He would have finished for the day in about twenty minutes.
Then he would come to her on the nearest approach to wings London
locomotion provided.

"Remember, it's something most particular that I want to see you about,"
said Zora. "Good-by."

She rang off, and went up-stairs again, removed the traces of tears from
her face and changed her dress. For a few moments she regarded her outward
semblance somewhat anxiously in the glass, unconscious of a new coquetry.
Then she sat down before the sitting-room fire and looked at the inner Zora
Middlemist.

There was never woman, since the world began, more cast down from her high
estate. Not a shred of magnificence remained. She saw herself as the most
useless, vaporing and purblind of mortals. She had gone forth from the
despised Nunsmere, where nothing ever happened, to travel the world over in
search of realities, and had returned to find that Nunsmere had all the
time been the center of the realities that most deeply concerned her life.
While she had been talking others had been living. The three beings whom
she had honored with her royal and somewhat condescending affection had all
done great things, passed through flames and issued thence purified with
love in their hearts. Emmy, Septimus, Sypher, all in their respective ways,
had grappled with essentials. She alone had done nothing--she the strong,
the sane, the capable, the magnificent. She had been a tinsel failure. So
far out of touch had she been with the real warm things of life which
mattered that she had not even gained her sister's confidence. Had she done
so