Wiggleswick! To no other mind but Septimus's could such a suggestion present itself.
"Then what's to be done ?" "I don't know," said Emmy.
They looked at each other blankly, two children face to face with one of the most terrible of modern social problems, aghast at their powerlessness to grapple with it.

It is a situation which wrings the souls of the strong with an agony worse than death.

It crushes the weak, or drives them mad, and often brings them, fragile wisps of human semblance, into the criminal dock.

Shame, disgrace, social pariahdom; unutterable pain to dear ones; an ever-gaping wound in fierce family pride; a stain on two generations; an incurable malady of a once blithe spirit; woe, disaster, and ruin--such is the punishment awarded by men and women to her who disobeys the social law and, perhaps with equal lack of volition, obeys the law physiological.

The latter is generally considered the greater crime.
These things passed through Septimus's mind.