ut it in his mouth, and fumbled in his
pockets for matches. Finding none, he threw the cigarette into the road.

"That's just like you," cried Zora. "Why didn't you ask the cabman for a
light?"

She laughed at him with an odd sense of intimacy, though she had known him
for scarcely an hour. He seemed rather a stray child than a man. She longed
to befriend him--to do something for him, motherwise--she knew not what.
Her adventure by now had failed to be adventurous. The spice of danger had
vanished. She knew she could sit beside this helpless being till the day of
doom without fear of molestation by word or act.

He obtained a light for his cigarette from the cabman and smoked in
silence. Gradually the languor of the night again stole over her senses,
and she forgot his existence. The carriage had turned homeward, and at a
bend of the road, high up above the sea, Monte Carlo came into view,
gleaming white far away below, like a group of fairy palaces lit by fairy
lamps, sheltered by the great black promontory of Monaco. From the gorge on
the left, the terraced rock on the right, came the smell of the wild thyme
and rosemary and the perfume of pale flowers. The touch of the air on her
cheek was a warm and scented kiss. The diamond stars drooped towards her
like a Danae shower. Like Danae's, her lips were parted. Her eyes strained
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 Hotel 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
certai