Septimus | Page 9

far beyond the stars into an unknown glory, and her heart throbbed with a passionate desire for unknown things. Of what nature they might be she did not dream. Not love. Zora Middlemist had forsworn it. Not the worship of a man. She had vowed by all the saints in her hierarchy that no man should ever again enter her life. Her soul revolted against the unutterable sex.
As soon as one realizes the exquisite humbug of sublunary existence he must weep for the pity of it.
The warm and scented air was a kiss, too, on the cheek of Septimus Dix; and his senses, too, were enthralled by the witchery of the night. But for him stars and scented air and the magic beauty of the sea were incarnate in the woman by his side.
Zora, as I have said, had forgotten the poor devil's existence.
CHAPTER III
When they drove up to the H?tel de Paris, she alighted and bade him a smiling farewell, and went to her room with the starlight in her eyes. The lift man asked if 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 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 Caf�� de Paris, instinct suggesting his belated breakfast, which, like his existence, Zora had forgotten. The waiter came.
"Monsieur d��sire?"
"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 H?tel 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 with another, especially one so beautiful. You seem to be alone here?"
Now she remembered having seen him before--rather frequently. The previous evening he had somewhat ostentatiously selected a table near hers at dinner. 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 come. She shivered with sudden anger, and round her heart crept the chill of fright which all women know who have been followed in a lonely street.
"I certainly am not alone," she said wrathfully. "Good morning."
The man covered his defeat by raising his hat with ironic politeness, and Zora walked swiftly away, in appearance a majestic Amazon, but inwardly a quivering woman. She marched straight up to the recumbent Dix. The Literary Man from London would have been amused. She interposed herself between the conversing Teutons and awakened the sleeper. He looked at her for a moment with a dreamy smile, then leaped to his feet.
"A man has insulted me--he has been following