"Why do you repay them to me?" asked Sypher.
Then he rose, laughed into the distressed face, and put both his hands on Septimus's shoulders.
"No, don't try to answer. I know more about you than you can possibly conceive, and to me you're transparency itself. But you see that I can't accept your patents, don't you?"
"I shall never do anything with them."
"Have you tried?"
"No."
"Then I will. It will be a partnership between my business knowledge and energy and your brains. That will be right and honorable for the two of us."
Septimus yielded. "If both you and Zora think so, it must be" he said. But in his heart he was disappointed.
A few days afterwards Shuttleworth came into Sypher's office, with an expression of cheerfulness on his dismal countenance.