ight for gods and men to no earthly
purpose. All her sacrifice had been in vain. It was then that she really
experienced the disciplinary irony of existence. She never wore the hat
again; wherein she was blameless.

The spring deepened into summer, and they stayed on in the Boulevard
Raspail until they gave up making plans. Paris baked in the sun, and
theaters perished, and riders disappeared from the Acacias, and Cook's
brakes replaced the flashing carriages in the grand Avenue des Champs
Elysees, and the great Anglo-Saxon language resounded from the Place de la
Bastille to the Bon Marche. The cab horses drooped as if drugged by the
vapor of the melting asphalt beneath their noses. Men and women sat by
doorways, in front of little shops, on the benches in wide thoroughfares.
The Latin Quarter blazed in silence and the gates of the great schools were
shut. The merchants of lemonade wheeled their tin vessels through the
streets and the bottles crowned with lemons looked pleasant to hot eyes.
For the dust lay thick upon the leaves of trees and the lips of men, and
the air was heavy with the over-fulfilment of spring's promise.

Septimus was sitting with Hegisippe Cruchot outside the little cafe of the
iron tables painted yellow where first they had consorted.

"_Mon ami_," said he, "you are one of the phenomena that make me believe in
the _bon Dieu_. If you hadn't dragged me from under the wheels of the cab,
I should have been killed, and if I had been killed you wouldn't have
introduced me to your aunt who can cook, and what I should have done
without your aunt heaven only knows. I owe you much."

"_Bah, mon vieux_," said Hegisippe, "what are you talking about? You owe me
nothing."

"I owe you three lives," said Septimus.

CHAPTER XIII

Hegisippe Cruchot laughed and twirled his little brows mustache.

"If you think so much of it," said he, "you can acquit your debt in full by
offering me another absinthe to drink the health of the three."

"Why, of course," said Septimus.

Hegisippe, who was sitting next the door, twisted his head round and
shouted his order to those within. It was a very modest little cafe; in
fact it was not a cafe at all, but a _Marchand des vins_ with a zinc
counter inside, and a couple of iron tables outside on the pavement to
convey the air of a _terrasse_. Septimus, with his genius for the
inharmonious, drank tea; not as the elegant nowadays drink at Colombin's or
Rumpelmayer's,