"I suppose you would do anything for her."
"Yes."
"So would I," said Septimus, in a low voice. "There are some women one lives for and others one dies for."
"She is one of the women for whom one would live."
Septimus shook his head. "No, she's the other kind. It's much higher. I've had a lot of time to think the last few months," he continued after a pause. "I've had no one but Emmy and Hégisippe Cruchot to talk to—and I've thought a great deal about women. They usedn't to come my way, and I didn't know anything at all about them."
"Do you now?" asked Sypher, with a smile.
"Oh, a great deal," replied Septimus seriously. "It's astonishing what a lot of difference there is between them and between the ways men approach different types. One woman a man wants to take by the hand and lead, and another—he's quite content if she makes a carpet of his body and walks over it to save her feet from sharp stones. It's odd, isn't it?"
"Not very," said Sypher, who took a more direct view of things than Septimus. "It's merely because he has got a kindly feeling for one woman and is desperately in love with the other."
"Perhaps that's it," said Septimus.
Sypher again looked at him sharply, as a man does who thinks he has caught another man's soul secret. It was only under considerable stress of feeling that such coherence of ideas could have been expressed by his irrelevant friend. What he had learned the last few minutes had been a surprise, a pain, and a puzzle to him. The runaway marriage held more elements than he had imagined. He bent forward confidentially.