n that she was in love, and opened the lift door for her with the
confidential air of the Latin who knows sweet secrets. But the lift man was
wrong. No man had a part in her soul's exultation. If Septimus Dix crossed
her mind while she was undressing, it was as a grotesque, bearing the same
relation to her emotional impression of the night as a gargoyle does to a
cathedral. When she went to bed, she slept the sound sleep of youth.

Septimus, after dismissing the cab, wandered in his vague way over to the
Cafe de Paris, instinct suggesting his belated breakfast, which, like his
existence, Zora had forgotten. The waiter came.

"_Monsieur desire?_"

"Absinthe," murmured Septimus absent-mindedly, "and--er--poached eggs--and
anything--a raspberry ice."

The waiter gazed at him in stupefaction; but nothing being too astounding
in Monte Carlo, he wiped the cold perspiration from his forehead and
executed the order.

The unholy meal being over, Septimus drifted into the square and spent most
of the night on a bench gazing at the Hotel de Paris and wondering which
were her windows. When she 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 gentle happiness in
his speculation. Chilled to the bone, at last, he sought his hotel bedroom
and smoked a pipe, meditative, with his hat on until the morning. Then he
went to bed.

Two mornings afterwards Zora came upon him on the Casino terrace. He
sprawled idly on a bench between a fat German and his fat wife, who were
talking across him. His straw hat was tilted over his eyes and his legs
were crossed. In spite 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. Then by the station lift she paused and
looked out at the bay of Mentone clasping the sea--a blue enamel in a
setting of gold. She stood for some moments lost in the joy of it when a
voice behind her brought her back to the commonplace.

"Very lovely, isn't it?"

A thin-faced Englishman of uncertain age and yellow, evil eyes met her
glance as she turned instinctively.

"Yes, it's beautiful," she replied coldly; "but that is no reason why you
should take the liberty of speaking to me."

"I couldn't help sharing my emotions wi