selfishness. It's a form of madness, I suppose. There was a man called
Bernard Palissy who had it, and made everybody sacrifice themselves to his
idea. I've no right to ask you to sacrifice yourself to mine."

"You have the right of friendship," said Zora, "to claim my interest in
your hopes and fears, and that I've given you and shall always give you.
But beyond that, as you say, you have no right."

He rose, with a laugh. "I know. It's as logical as a proposition of Euclid.
But all the same I feel I have a higher right, beyond any logic. There are
all kinds of phenomena in life which have nothing whatsoever to do with
reason. You have convinced my reason that I'm an egotistical dreamer. But
nothing you can do or say will ever remove the craving for you that I have
here "--and he thumped his big chest--"like hunger."

When he had gone Zora thought over the scene with more disturbance of mind
than she appreciated. She laughed to herself at Sypher's fantastic claim.
To give up the great things of the world, Life itself, for the sake of a
quack ointment! It was preposterous. Sypher was as crazy as Septimus;
perhaps crazier, for the latter did not thump his chest and inform her that
his guns or his patent convertible bed-razor-strop had need of her "here."
Decidedly, the results of her first excursion into the big world had not
turned out satisfactorily. Her delicate nose sniffed at them in disdain.
The sniff, however, was disappointingly unconvincing. The voices of
contemptible people could not sound in a woman's ears like the drowsy
murmuring of waters. The insane little devil that had visited her in Clem
Sypher's garden whispered her to stay.

But had not Zora, in the magnificence of her strong womanhood, in the
hunger of her great soul, to find somewhere in the world a Mission in Life,