Septimus

Madame had won. She dangled her empty purse and laughed. Then the lift man, who had seen that light in women's eyes before, made certain that she was in love, and

, bearing the same relation to her emotional impression of the night as a gargoy

r to the Café de Paris, instinct suggesting his belated breakfast

eur dé

sent-mindedly, "and-er-poached e

eing too astounding in Monte Carlo, he wiped the cold

mentioned casually, a day or two later, that her windows looked the other way over the sea, he felt that Destiny had fooled him once more; but for the time being he found a gen

ite of the conversation (and a middle-class German does not whisper when he talks to his wife), and the going and coming of the crowd-in spite of the sunshine and the blue air, he slumbered peacefully. Zora passed him once or twice.

vely, is

n age and yellow, evil eyes met her

ly; "but that is no reason why you shou

s with another, especially one so b

r. He had watched her as she had left the theater and followed her to the lift door. He had been watching for his opportunity and now thought it had

lone," she said wrath

wardly a quivering woman. She marched straight up to the recumbent Dix. The Literary Man from London would have been amused. She interposed

en following me about and tried

mus. "What shall I do

"It's serious. I'd be glad if you'd ki

rious. If you wanted me to shoot him I'd do it. I'd do any

aiming desire for

sex. And as she passed by the offender she smiled down at her companion with all the sweetness of intimacy and as

lied in answer to her question. "I

leswick do when

he illustrated Police News for him, and he cuts them out and gums them in a scra

ed about guns the other evening. W

f his eye, child-fashion, as though to make sure she

written a treatise on

he had not credited him with so serious a

l and draw diagrams. I'm afraid you wouldn't like it. Wiggleswick doesn't. It bore

of corpuscles must be try

reat thing is to keep t

mean?" she

n't it? I once knew a man who was just a complicated mechanism of brain encased in a body. His hea

e ether between sea and sky. Zo

t?" she as

her," s

over the parapet above the railway line. After a f

human-so that, if a woman should eve

e manner he picked it tenderly off and laid it on the leaf

wling thing-let alone a woman,"

aterpillar you kill a butter

you kill

ything highe

broke by asking her if she read Persian. He excused his knowledge of it by saying that it kept him human. S

unger. He murmured that it must be near dinner time. She protested. He passed his hands across his

d have two breakfasts running," he exclaimed brightly, "I shall begin fa

with legs apart, stood the wretch with the evil eyes. He looked at her from afar, banteringly. Defiance rose in Zor

aid; and without waiting for a reply she sailed majestically past the

the peak in Darien. It was even a wilder adventure than the memorable drive. That was but a caprice of the goddess; this was a sign of her friendship. The newness of their intimacy smote him dumb. He passed his hand through his Struwel Peter hair and wondered. Was it real? There sat the goddess, separated from him by the strip of damask, her gold-flecked eyes smiling frankly and trustfully into his, p

uit, the soft pink of salmon; here and there a bold note of color-the flowers in a woman's hat, the purples and topazes of wine. Nearer still to the sense is the charm of privacy. The one human being for you in the room is your companion. The space round your chairs is a magic circle, cutting you off from the others, who are mere decorations, beautiful or grotesque. Between you are substances which it were gross to call food: dainty mysteries of coolness an

arlo lentils are quite as expensive-it is a pleasant thing, even for the food-worn wanderer of many restaurants, to

ing like this and I've often won

unched hundreds of t

I've never had a-"

he said, reddening,

y n

ed with the profound gravity of a man who has solved a psychological problem. "Some fellows have a gift for collecting Toby jugs. Everywhere

mice, at any r

Do you l

all the bright and burning things of lif

er with wistf

e must be full

r whether you have the faintest idea who I am and what I am and what I'm doing here all by myself, and why you and I ar

nted, where would be the chivalry and faith of the children of the world? He accepted her unquestioningly as the si

e said, "and that has

re are heaps of them, people say, in this pl

charge of my mone

u did it? To tes

he saw the hurt instantly, and with a

id of me. It is not in your nature

ingers, not knowing what to do with it, vaguely wondering whether he should raise it to his lips, and so ke

rom his pocket. "I can't spend it. I've tried to. I bought a dog yesterday but he wanted to bit

be changed for notes at the rooms, he was astonished at her sapience.

rched him back with a delicious sense of responsibility and stood over him till he was adequately fitted. In other aspects he was like a woman in whose shy delicacy she could confide. She awoke also to a new realization-that of power. Now, to use power with propriety needs wisdom, and the woman who is wise at five-and-twenty cannot make out at sixty why she has remained an old maid. The delightful way to use it is that of a babe when he first discovers that a stick hits. That is the way that Zora, who was not wise, used it over Septimus. For the first time in her life she owned a human being. A former joy in the possession of a devoted dog who did tricks was as nothing to this rapture. It was splendid. She owned him. Whenever she had a desire for his company-which was often, as solitude at Monte Carlo is more depressing than Zora had realized-she sent a p

shion?" she asked him one day. The hat episode had le

ed, and returned with his shock parted in the middle and plastered down heavily with pomatum, a saint of more than methodistical meekness. On Zora declaring that he looked awful (he was indeed inconceivably

as kind and not tyrannical, she

do anything else, don

es of action with lack-luster eye, would declare that there was

Andes and eat fried moonbeams, you would s

escent; other people can jump about like grasshoppers. Do you know grassho

his father, Sir Erasmus Dix, a well-known engineer, to whose early repression much of Septimus's timidity was due, he had inherited a modest fortune. After leaving Cambri

rd's Bush?"

ck likes i

himself comfortable in your quarters and drinks your wine and

course," sa

re are t

ick has them,

don't know how angry you make

el

" said Zora with a

with her. Memories came back to him of the men with whom he had been intimate. His father, the mechanical man who had cogs instead of corpuscles in his blood, Wiggleswick the undesirable, a few rowdy men on his staircase at Cambridge who had led shocking lives-o

, "as if I weren't fit to b

said Zora. "Would you be good a

cstasy, but Zora was only conscious of t

of the Literary Man from London, she laughed at it scornfully. Here was a man, at any rate, who regarded her beauty unconcerned

while Turner, her maid, was brushing her

h of Monte Carlo. I must go to Paris. What do

be most improper,

ut it," cried Zora, with a flush. "Y