William John Locke

“ Just as nothing is sacred to a sapper, so is nothing hurtful to a Zouave. They have hides like hippopotamuses, those fellows. You could dip them in vitriol and they wouldn't feel it."
"So his heels recovered in spite of the Cure?" said Sypher, grimly.
"Evidently," said Dr. Bourdillot.
Sypher sat in his room for a couple of days, his leg on a chair, and looked at Mont Blanc, exquisite in its fairy splendor against the far, pale sky. It brought him no consolation. On the contrary it reminded him of Hannibal and other conquerors leading their footsore armies over the Alps. ”

“ One can't realize everything at once. 'Clem Sypher, Friend of Humanity!' How they must have jeered behind my back if they thought me sincere! How they must have despised me if they thought me nothing but an advertising quack! Zora Middlemist, for heaven's sake tell me what you have thought of me. What have you taken me for—a madman or a charlatan?"
"It is you that must tell me what has happened," said Zora earnestly. "I don't know. Septimus gave me to understand that the Cure had failed. He's never clear about anything in his own mind, and he's worse when he tries to explain it to others." ”

“ Zora Middlemist is driven round the earth like Io by the gadfly of her temperament. She's seeking the Beauty or Meaning or Fulfilment, or whatever she chooses to call it, of Life. What she's really looking for is Love."
"I don't believe it," said Sypher.
Rattenden shrugged his shoulders. "It's true all the same. But in her case it's the great love—the big thing for the big man—the gorgeous tropical sunshine in which all the splendor of her can develop. No little man will move her. ”

“ She had no consuming passion for reforming any section of the universe. She had no mission—that she knew of—to accomplish. Unlike so many of her sex who yearn to be as men and go out into the world she had no inner mandate to do anything, no ambition to be anything. She was simply a great, rich flower, struggling through the shade to the sunlight, plenty of sunlight, as much sunlight as the heavens could give her.
The Literary Man from London happened to be returning to town by the train that carried Zora on the first stage of her pilgrimage. ”

“ The life of Holborn swallowed him. He felt glad who once hated the dismaying bustle. His heart sang for joy. Something had been given him to do for the sake of the woman he loved. What more can a man do than lay down his life for a friend? Perhaps he can do a little more for a loved woman: marry somebody else.
Deep down in his heart he loved Zora. ”

“ When a woman, infinitely desired, pleads like that with glorious eyes, and her fragrance and her dearness are within arm's length, a man has but to catch her to him and silence her pleadings with a man's strength, and carry her off in triumph. It has been the way of man with woman since the world began, and Sypher knew it by his man's instinct. It was a temptation such as he had never dreamed was in the world. He passed through a flaming, blazing torment of battle.
"Forget what I have said, Zora. ”

“ Snow-capped Sierras and crowded tram-cars were equally unsuggestive of a mission in life. In the rare moments which activity allowed her for depression she began to wonder whether she was not chasing the phantom of a wild goose. A damsel to whom in a moment of expansion she revealed the object of her journeying exclaimed: "What other mission in life has a woman than to spend money and look beautiful?"
Zora laughed incredulously. ”

“ Hope lured her on with renewed promises from city to city. At last, on her homeward journey, he whispered the magic name of Monte Carlo, and her heart was aflutter in anticipation of wonderland.
[13] She stood bewildered, lonely, and dismayed in the first row behind the chairs, fingering an empty purse. She had been in the rooms ten minutes, and she had lost twenty louis. Her last coup had been successful, but a bland old lady, with the white hair and waxen face of sainted motherhood, had swept up her winnings so unconcernedly that Zora's brain began to swim. ”

“ Cousin Jane, who had had much to write concerning the elopement, was summoned, and Zora, with infinite baggage in the care of Turner, set sail for California.
The New World lay before her with its chances of real, quivering, human Life. Nunsmere, where nothing ever happened, lay behind her. She smiled graciously at Sypher, who saw her off at Waterloo, and said nice things to him about the Cure, but before her eyes danced a mirage in which Clem Sypher and his Cure were not visible. ”

“ All, however, agree that she is unscrupulous, that the wish of the woman is the politely insincere wish of the Deity, and that she pursues her course with a serene sureness unknown to man. It is when a woman does not know what she wants that she baffles the philosopher just as the ant in her aimless discursiveness baffles the entomologist. Of course, if the philosopher has guessed her unformulated desire, then things are easy for him, and he can discourse with certitude on feminine vagaries, as Rattenden did on the journeyings of Zora Middlemist. ”

“ Zora's beautiful shoulders gave the tiniest shrug of uncertainty. Perhaps her young friend was right, and the command of the earth was worth the slight penalty of a husband. She was tired and disheartened at finding herself no nearer to the heart of things than when she had left Nunsmere. Her attitude toward the once unspeakable sex had imperceptibly changed. She no longer blazed with indignation when a man made love to her. ”

“ I shouldn't like to pass my life without dreams, Zora. I could give up tobacco and alcohol and clean collars and servants, and everything you could think of—but not dreams. Without them the earth is just a sort of backyard of a place."
"And with them?" said Zora.
"An infinite garden."
"I'm afraid you'll be disillusioned over poor Septimus," she said, "but I shouldn't like you to take up anything you didn't believe in. What would be quite honest in another man wouldn't be honest in you."
"That means," said Sypher, "you wouldn't like to see me going on dealing in quack medicines?" ”