al, and silver of the tables; the tender green of
lettuce, the yellows of fruit, the soft pink of salmon; here and there a
bold note of color--the flowers in a woman's hat, the purples and topazes
of wine. Nearer still to the sense is the charm of privacy. The one human
being for you in the room is your companion. The space round your chairs is
a magic circle, cutting you off from the others, who are mere decorations,
beautiful or grotesque. Between you are substances which it were gross to
call food: dainty mysteries of coolness and sudden flavors; a fish salad in
which the essences of sea and land are blended in cold, celestial harmony;
innermost kernels of the lamb of the salted meadows where must grow the
Asphodel on which it fed, in amorous union with what men call a sauce, but
really oil and cream and herbs stirred by a god in a dream; peaches in
purple ichor chastely clad in snow, melting on the palate as the voice of
the divine singer after whom they are named melts in the soul.

It is a pleasant thing--hedonistic? yes; but why live on lentils when
lotus is to your hand? and, really, at Monte Carlo lentils are quite as
expensive--it is a pleasant thing, even for the food-worn wanderer of many
restaurants, to lunch _tete-a-tete_ at the Hotel de Paris; but for the
young and fresh-hearted to whom it is new, it is enchantment.

"I've often looked at people eating like this and I've often wondered how
it felt," said Septimus.

"But you must have lunched hundreds of times in such places."

"Yes--but by myself. I've never had a--" he paused. "A what?"

"A--a gracious lady," he said, reddening, "to sit opposite me."

"Why not?"

"No one has ever wanted me. It has always puzzled me how men get to know
women and go about with them. I think it must be a gift," he asserted with
the profound gravity of a man who has solved a psychological problem. "Some
fellows have a gift for collecting Toby jugs. Everywhere they go they
discover a Toby jug. I couldn't find one if I tried for a year. It's the
same thing. At Cambridge they used to call me the Owl."

"An owl catches mice, at any rate," said Zora.

"So do I. Do you like mice?"

"No. I want to catch lions and tigers and all the bright and burning things
of life," cried Zora, in a burst of confidence.

He regarded her with wistful admiration.

"Your whole life must be full of such things."

"I wonder," she said, looking at him over the spoonful of peche Melba which