"God bless my soul," said he, "I suppose that's so. It's very alarming. No one has ever looked to me in all my life. I'd wander barefoot for you all over the earth. But couldn't you find somebody else who's more used to looking after people? It's for your own sake entirely," he hastened to assure her.
"I know," she said. "But you see it's impossible for me to go to any of my friends, especially after what has happened." She held out her ungloved left hand. "How could I explain?"
"You must never explain," he agreed, sagely. "It would undo everything. I suppose things are easy, after all, when you've set your mind on them—or get some chap that knows everything to tell you how to do them—and there's lots of fellows about that know everything—solicitors and so forth. There's the man who told me about a Registrar. See how easy it was. Where would you like to go?"
"Anywhere out of England." She shuddered. "Take me to Paris first. We can go on from there anywhere we like."
"Certainly," said Septimus, and he hailed a hansom.
Thus it fell out that the strangely married pair kept together during the long months that followed. Emmy's flat in London had been rented furnished. The maid Edith had vanished, after the manner of many of her kind, into ancillary space. The theater and all it signified to Emmy became a past dream. Her inner world was tragical enough, poor child. Her outer world was Septimus. In Paris, as she shrank from meeting possible acquaintances, he found her a furnished appartement in the Boulevard Raspail, while he perched in a little hotel close by. The finding of the appartement was an illustration of his newly invented, optimistic theory of getting things done.
He came back to the hotel where he had provisionally lodged her and informed her of his discovery. She naturally asked him how he had found it.
"A soldier told me," he said.
"A soldier?"