Septimus | Page 7

built.
"You've brought me all this stuff, but what am I to do with it?" he
asked helplessly.
"Perhaps I had better take care of it for you."
It was a relief from the oppressive loneliness to talk to a human being;
so she lingered wistfully in conversation. A pathetic eagerness came
into the man's face.
"I wish you would," said he, drawing a handful from his jacket pocket.
"I should be so much happier."
"You can hardly be such a gambler," she laughed.
"Oh, no! It's not that at all. Gambling bores me."
"Why do you play, then?"
"I don't. I staked that louis because I wanted to see whether I should be
interested. I wasn't, as I began to think about the guns. Have you had
breakfast?"
Again Zora was startled. A sane man does not talk of breakfasting at
nine o'clock in the evening. But if he were a lunatic perhaps it were
wise to humor him.
"Yes," she said. "Have you?"
"No. I've only just got up."
"Do you mean to say you've been asleep all day?"
"What's the noisy day made for?"

"Let us sit down," said Zora.
They found one of the crimson couches by the wall vacant, and sat
down. Zora regarded him curiously.
"Why should you be happier if I took care of your money?"
"I shouldn't spend it. I might meet a man who wanted to sell me a
gas-engine."
"But you needn't buy it."
"These fellows are so persuasive, you see. At Rotterdam last year, a
man made me buy a second-hand dentist's chair."
"Are you a dentist?" asked Zora.
"Lord, no! If I were I could have used the horrible chair."
"What did you do with it?"
"I had it packed up and despatched, carriage paid, to an imaginary
person at Singapore."
He made this announcement in his tired, gentle manner, without the
flicker of a smile. He added, reflectively--
"That sort of thing becomes expensive. Don't you find it so?"
"I would defy anybody to sell me a thing I didn't want," she replied.
"Ah, that," said he with a glance of wistful admiration, "that is because
you have red hair."
If any other strange male had talked about her hair, Zora Middlemist
would have drawn herself up in Junoesque majesty and blighted him
with a glance. She had done with men and their compliments forever.
In that she prided herself on her Amazonianism. But she could not be
angry with the inconclusive being to whom she was talking. As well

resent the ingenuous remarks of a four-year-old child.
"What has my red hair to do with it?" she asked pleasantly.
"It was a red-haired man who sold me the dentist's chair."
"Oh!" said Zora, nonplussed.
There was a pause. The man leaned back, embracing one knee with
both hands. They were nerveless, indeterminate hands, with long
fingers, such as are in the habit of dropping things. Zora wondered how
they supported his knee. For some time he stared into vacancy, his
pale-blue eyes adream. Zora laughed.
"Guns?" she asked.
"No," said he, awaking to her presence. "Perambulators."
She rose. "I thought you might be thinking of breakfast. I must be
going back to my hotel. These rooms are too hot and horrible. Good
night."
"I will see you to the lift, if you'll allow me," he said politely.
She graciously assented and they left the rooms together. In the atrium
she changed her mind about the lift. She would leave the Casino by the
main entrance and walk over to the Hôtel de Paris for the sake of a
breath of fresh air. At the top of the steps she paused and filled her
lungs. It was a still, moonless night, and the stars hung low down, like
diamonds on a canopy of black velvet. They made the flaring lights of
the terrace of the Hôtel and Café de Paris look tawdry and meretricious.
"I hate them," she said, pointing to the latter.
"Stars are better," said her companion.
She turned on him swiftly.
"How did you know I was making comparisons?"

"I felt it," he murmured.
They walked slowly down the steps. At the bottom a carriage and pair
seemed to rise mysteriously out of the earth.
"'Ave a drive? Ver' good carriage," said a voice out of the dimness.
Monte Carlo cabmen are unerring in their divination of the
Anglo-Saxon.
Why not? The suggestion awoke in her an instant craving for the true
beauty of the land. It was unconventional, audacious, crazy. But, again,
why not? Zora Middlemist was answerable for her actions to no man or
woman alive. Why not drink a great draught of the freedom that was
hers? What did it matter that the man was a stranger? All the more
daring the adventure. Her