Chapter 4 — Chapter 4

She was close to him now, could see him staring
at the sky, muttering, clasping his hands. Yet Dr.
Holmes said there was nothing the matter with him.
What then had happened—why had he gone, then,
why, when she sat by him, did he start, frown at
her, move away, and point at her hand, take her
hand, look at it terrified?

Was it that she had taken off her wedding ring?
“My hand has grown so thin,” she said. “I have
put it in my purse,” she told him.

He dropped her hand. Their marriage was over,
he thought, with agony, with relief. The rope was
cut; he mounted; he was free, as it was decreed
that he, Septimus, the lord of men, should be free;
alone (since his wife had thrown away her wedding
ring; since she had left him), he, Septimus, was
alone, called forth in advance of the mass of men
to hear the truth, to learn the meaning, which now
at last, after all the toils of civilisation—Greeks,
Romans, Shakespeare, Darwin, and now himself—was
to be given whole to.... “To whom?” he
asked aloud. “To the Prime Minister,” the voices
which rustled above his head replied. The supreme
secret must be told to the Cabinet; first that trees
are alive; next there is no crime; next love, universal
love, he muttered, gasping, trembling, painfully
drawing out these profound truths which
needed, so deep were they, so difficult, an immense
effort to speak out, but the world was entirely
changed by them for ever.