"You did right, Septimus," she said very gently. "But of what use can I be to him?"
Septimus said: "He's the one to tell you that."
"But do you think he knows? He didn't before. He wanted me to stay as a kind of Mascotte for the Cure—simply sit still while he drew influence out of me or something. It was absurd."
It was on this occasion that Septimus made his one contribution to pessimistic philosophy.
"When you analyze anything in life," said he, "don't you think that you always come down to a reductio ad absurdum?"
CHAPTER XIX
"I'm very sorry to leave you, Mr. Sypher," said Shuttleworth, "but my first duty is to my wife and family."
Clem Sypher leaned back in his chair behind his great office desk and looked at his melancholy manager with the eyes of a general whose officers refuse the madness of a forlorn hope.
"Quite so," he said tonelessly. "When do you want to go?"