He rose, with a laugh. "I know. It's as logical as a proposition of Euclid. But all the same I feel I have a higher right, beyond any logic. There are all kinds of phenomena in life which have nothing whatsoever to do with reason. You have convinced my reason that I'm an egotistical dreamer. But nothing you can do or say will ever remove the craving for you that I have here "--and he thumped his big chest--"like hunger." When he had gone Zora thought over the scene with more disturbance of mind than she appreciated. She laughed to herself at Sypher's fantastic claim. To give up the great things of the world, Life itself, for the sake of a quack ointment! It was preposterous. Sypher was as crazy as Septimus; perhaps crazier, for the latter did not thump his chest and inform her that his guns or his patent convertible bed-razor-strop had need of her "here." Decidedly, the results of her first excursion into the big world had not turned out satisfactorily. Her delicate nose sniffed at them in disdain. The sniff, however, was disappointingly unconvincing. The voices of contemptible people could not sound in a woman's ears like the drowsy murmuring of waters. The insane little devil that had visited her in Clem Sypher's garden whispered her to stay. But had not Zora, in the magnificence of her strong womanhood, in the hunger of her great soul, to find somewhere in the world a Mission in Life, a fulness of existence which would accomplish her destiny? Down with the insane little devil and all his potential works! Zora laughed and recovered her serenity. Cousin Jane, who had had much to write concerning the elopement, was summoned, and Zora, with infinite baggage in the care of Turner, set sail for California. The New World lay before her with its chances of real, quivering, human Life. Nunsmere, where nothing ever happened, lay behind her. She smiled graciously at Sypher, who saw her off at Waterloo, and said nice things to him about the Cure, but before her eyes danced a mirage in which Clem Sypher and his Cure were not visible. The train steamed out of the station. Sypher stood on the edge of the platform and watched the end buffers until they were out of sight; then he turned and strode away, and his face was that of a man stricken with great loneliness. CHAPTER XII It never occurred to Septimus that he had done a quixotic thing in marrying Emmy, any more than to pat himself on the back for a monstrously clever fellow when he had completed a new invention. At the door of the Registry Office he took off his hat, held out his hand, and said good-by. "But where are you going?" Emmy asked in dismay. Septimus didn't know. He waved his hand vaguely over London, and said, "Anywhere." Emmy began to cry. She had passed most of the morning in tears. She felt doubly guilty now that she had accepted the sacrifice of his life; an awful sense of loneliness also overwhelmed her. "I didn't know that you hated me like that," she said.