The sullen morning light diffused itself through the room, mingling ironically with the pretty glow cast by the pink-shaded electric globes, while the two forlorn grotesques regarded each other, unconscious of each other's grotesqueness, the girl disheveled and haggard, the man with rough gray coat unbuttoned, showing the rumpled evening dress; her toque miserably awry, his black tie riding above his collar, the bow somewhere behind his ear. And the tragedy of tragedies of a young girl's life was unfolded. "My God, what am I to do?" Septimus stared at her, his hands in his trousers pockets. In one of them his fingers grasped a folded bit of paper. He drew it out unthinkingly--a very dirty bit of paper. In his absent-minded way he threw it towards the fire, but it fell on the tiled hearth. In moments of great strain the mind seizes with pitiful eagerness on the trivial. Emmy looked at the paper. Something familiar about its shape struck her. She leaned forward, picked it up and unfolded it. "This is a check," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Did you mean to throw it away?" He took it from her and, looking at it, realized that It was Clem Sypher's check for two hundred pounds. "Thanks," said he, thrusting it into his overcoat pocket. Then his queerly working brain focused associations. "I know what we can do," said he. "We can go to Naples." "What good would that be?" she asked, treating the preposterous question seriously. He was taken aback by her directness, and passed his fingers through his hair. "I don't know," said he. "The first thing we must do," said Emmy--and her voice sounded in her own ears like someone else's--"is to get away from here. Zora will be down by the first train after my absence is discovered. You quite see that Zora mustn't find me, don't you?" "Of course," said Septimus, blankly. Then he brightened. "You can go to an hotel. A Temperance Hotel in Bloomsbury. Wiggleswick was telling me about one the other day. A friend of his burgled it and got six years. A man called Barkus." "But what was the name of the hotel?" "Ah! that I forget," said Septimus. "It had something to do with Sir Walter Scott. Let me see. Lockhart--no, Lockhart's is a different place. It was either the Bride of Lammermoor or--yes," he cried triumphantly, "it was the Ravenswood, in Southampton Row." Emmy rose. The switch off onto the trivial piece of paper had braced her unstrung nerves for a final effort: that, and the terror of meeting Zora. "You'll take me there. I'll just put some things together." He opened the door for her to pass out. On the threshold she turned. "I believe God sent you to Nunsmere Common last night."