Septimus saw that she suffered, and went many quaint and irrelevant ways to alleviate her misery.

Sometimes they got on her nerves; more often they made the good tears come.

Once she was reading a tattered volume of George Eliot which she had picked up during a stroll on the quays, and calling him over to her side pointed out a sentence: "Dogs are the best friends, they are always ready with their sympathy and they ask no questions." "That's like you," she said; "but George Eliot had never met a man like you, poor thing, so she had to stick the real thing down to dogs." Septimus reddened.

"Dogs bark and keep one from sleeping," he said.

"My next-door neighbor at the Hotel Godet has two.