"You've mixed much with women and studied them," said Sypher. "I haven't. I was engaged to a girl once, but it was a tepid affair. She broke it off because it was much more vital to me to work in my laboratory than to hold her hand in her mother's parlor. No doubt she was right. This was in the early days when I was experimenting with the Cure. Since then I've been a man of one idea. It has absorbed all my soul and energies, so that I've had none to spare for women. Here and there, of course--" "I know. The trifling things. They are part of the banquet of life. One eats and forgets." Sypher glanced at him and nodded his appreciation of the Literary Man's neat way of putting things. But he did not reply. He ate his fish in silence, hardly tasting it, his mind far away following Zora Middlemist across the seas. A horrible, jealous hatred of the big man for whom she sought sprang up in his heart. His pink face flushed red. "This _sole bonne femme_ is excellent," said Rattenden. Sypher started in confusion, and praised the chef, and talked gastronomy while his thoughts were with Zora. He remembered the confession of Septimus Dix in Paris. Septimus had been caught in the irresistible atmosphere. He loved her, but he was one of the little men and she had passed him by with her magnificent head in the air. The gastronomic talk languished. Presently Rattenden said: "One of the feminine phenomena that has puzzled me most of late has been the marriage of her sister to Septimus Dix." Sypher laid down his knife and fork. "How extraordinary that you should mention it! He was in my mind as you spoke." "I was thinking of the sister," said Rattenden. "She has Mrs. Middlemist's temperament without her force of character--the sex without the splendor. I heard a very curious thing about her only yesterday." "What was it?" "It was one of those things that are not told." "Tell me," said Sypher, earnestly. "I have reasons for asking. I am convinced there are circumstances of which neither Mrs. Dix's mother nor sister know anything. I'm a loyal man. You may trust me." "Very well," said Rattenden. "Have you ever heard of a man called Mordaunt Prince? Yes--a well-known actor--about the biggest blackguard that disgraces the stage. He was leading man at the theater where she last played. They were doing 'The Widow of Ware.' They were about a great deal together. It was common gossip at the time." "Gossip is notoriously uncharitable," said Sypher.