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"The Nunsmere air will rest you," she said demurely. "I don't think much of the air if you're not in it. It's like whiskey-less soda water." He drew a long breath. "My God! It's good to see you again. You're the one creature on this earth who believes in the Cure as I do myself." Zora glanced at him guiltily. Her enthusiasm for the Cure as a religion was tepid.
There was no mission on earth which she could fulfil. She thought enviously of Cousin Jane. The steamer entered the harbor; the passengers for Marseilles landed, and the mail was brought aboard. There was only one letter for Mrs. Middlemist. It bore the Nunsmere postmark. She opened it and found the tail of the little china dog.
When Zora announced her intention to Sypher of leading a migratory existence between London and Nunsmere for the sakes of Emmy and himself, he burst into a panegyric on her angelic nature. Her presence would irradiate these last dark days of disaster, for the time was quickly approaching when the Bermondsey factory would be closed down, and Sypher's Cure would fade away from the knowledge of men.
She would first go to Paris, where some Americans whom she had met in Florence and with whom she had exchanged occasional postcards pressed her to join them. Then London; and then a spell of rest in the lavender of Nunsmere. That was her programme. Septimus Dix was to escort her as far as Paris, in defiance of the proprieties as interpreted by Turner.
On this occasion it was the Globe newspaper which Septimus, who had spent the day in London on an unexecuted errand to his publisher, had brought back with him. Evening papers being luxuries in Nunsmere, he had hidden it carefully from Wiggleswick, in order to present it to the ladies.
So while the two incapables were sedulously covering up their tracks, the most placid indifference as to their whereabouts reigned in Nunsmere. The telegram, therefore, announcing their marriage found Zora entirely unprepared for the news it contained. What a pitiful tragedy lay behind the words she was a million miles from suspecting.
If I turn my head round, when I'm sitting at my desk, I have a kind of fleeting vision of you hovering over my chair. It puts heart and soul into me, and gives me courage to make desperate ventures." "As I'm only there in the spirit, it doesn't matter whether the bodily I is in Nunsmere or Los Angeles." "How can I tell?" said he, with one of his swift, clear glances.
"I've just left the Hôtel Godet and come back to Nunsmere. Perhaps I'll give up the house and take Wiggleswick to London when Emmy returns. She promised to look for a flat for me. I believe women are rather good at finding flats." Sypher handed him a box of cigars. He lit one and held it awkwardly with the tips of his long, nervous fingers.
The slight doubt cast by Septimus on Zora's faith remained disturbingly at the back of his mind. Yet he clung passionately to his belief. If it were not Heaven-sent, then was he of men most miserable. Never had he welcomed the sight of Nunsmere more than the next Saturday afternoon when the trap turned off the highroad and the common came into view.
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