to be a friend. Tell me about her."

Septimus again reddened uncomfortably. He belonged to a class which does
not discuss its women with a stranger even though he be a newly sworn
brother.

"She mightn't care for it," he said.

Sypher once more clapped him on the shoulder. "Good again!" he cried,
admiringly. "I shouldn't like you half so much if you had told me. I've got
to know, for I know everything, so I'll ask her myself."

Zora came down coated and veiled, her face radiant as a Romney in its frame
of gauze. She looked so big and beautiful, and Sypher looked so big and
strong, and both seemed so full of vitality, that Septimus felt criminally
insignificant. His voice was of too low a pitch to make itself carry when
these two spoke in their full tones. He shrank into his shell. Had he not
realized, in his sensitive way, that without him as a watchdog--ineffectual
spaniel that he was--Zora would not accept Clem Sypher's invitation, he
would have excused himself from the drive. He differentiated, not
conceitedly, between Clem Sypher and himself. She had driven alone with him
on her first night at Monte Carlo. But then she had carried him off between
her finger and thumb, so to speak, as the Brobdingnagian ladies carried off
Gulliver. He knew that he did not count as a danger in the eyes of
high-spirited young women. A man like Sypher did. He knew that Zora would
not have driven alone with Sypher any more than with the wretch of the evil
eyes. He did not analyze this out himself, as his habit of mind was too
vague and dreamy. But he knew it instinctively, as a dog knows whom he can
trust with his mistress and whom he cannot. So when Sypher and Zora, with
a great bustle of life, were discussing seating arrangements in the car, he