"Yes. It's better," she assented. "But it's chimerical."
"So are all the dreams ever dreamed by man. I shouldn't like to pass my life without dreams, Zora. I could give up tobacco and alcohol and clean collars and servants, and everything you could think of—but not dreams. Without them the earth is just a sort of backyard of a place."
"And with them?" said Zora.
"An infinite garden."
"I'm afraid you'll be disillusioned over poor Septimus," she said, "but I shouldn't like you to take up anything you didn't believe in. What would be quite honest in another man wouldn't be honest in you."
"That means," said Sypher, "you wouldn't like to see me going on dealing in quack medicines?"
Zora flushed red.
"It was at the back of my mind," she confessed. "But I did put my thoughts into the form of a compliment."
"Zora," said he, "if I fell below what I want to appear in your eyes, I should lose the dearest dream of all."
In the evening came Septimus to Penton Court to discuss the new scheme with Sypher. Wiggleswick, with the fear of Zora heavy upon him, had laid out his master's dinner suit, and Septimus had meekly put it on. He had also dined in a Christian fashion, for the old villain could cook a plain dinner creditably when he chose. Septimus proclaimed the regeneration of his body servant as one of the innumerable debts he owed to Zora.