"If you don't sleep, you'll get ill and die," said Septimus.

"So much the better," she replied.

"I wish I could help you. I do wish I could help you."

"No one can help me. Least of all you. What could a man do in any case?
And, as for you, my poor Septimus, you want as much taking care of as I
do."

The depreciatory tone did not sting him as it would have done another man,
for he knew his incapacity. He had also gone through the memory of Moses's
rod the night before.

"I wonder whether Wiggleswick could be of any use?" he said, more
brightly.

Emmy laughed dismally. Wiggleswick! To no other mind but Septimus's could
such a suggestion present itself.

"Then what's to be done?"

"I don't know," said Emmy.

They looked at each other blankly, two children face to face with one of
the most terrible of modern social problems, aghast at their powerlessness
to grapple with it. It is a situation which wrings the souls of the strong
with an agony worse than death. It crushes the weak, or drives them mad,
and often brings them, fragile wisps of human semblance, into the criminal