She was ever so little piqued at his apparent indifference.  But if men like Septimus Dix did not take women for granted, where would be the chivalry and faith of the children of the world?  He accepted her unquestioningly as the simple Trojan accepted the Olympian lady who appeared to him clad in grace (but otherwise scantily) from a rosy cloud.

“You are yourself,” he said, “and that has been enough for me.”

“How do you know I’m not an adventuress?  There are heaps of them, people say, in this place.  I might be a designing thief of a woman.”

“I offered you the charge of my money the other night.”

“Was that why you did it?  To test me?” she asked.

He reddened and started as if stung.  She saw the hurt instantly, and with a gush of remorse begged for forgiveness.

“No.  I didn’t mean it.  It was horrid of me.  It is not in your nature to think such a thing.  Forgive me.”

Frankly, impulsively, she stretched her hand across the table.  He touched it timidly with his ineffectual fingers, not knowing what to do with it, vaguely wondering whether he should raise it to his lips, and so kept touching it, until she pressed his fingers in a little grip of friendliness, and withdrew it with a laugh.

“Do you know, I still have that money,” he said, pulling a handful of great five-louis pieces from his pocket.  “I can’t spend it.  I’ve tried to.  I bought a dog yesterday but he wanted to bite me and I had to give him to the hotel porter.  All this gold makes such a bulge in my pocket.”

When Zora explained that the coins were only used as counters and could be changed for notes at the rooms, he was astonished at her sapience.  He had never thought of it.  Thus Zora regained her sense of superiority.

This lunch was the first of many meals they had together; and meals led to drives and excursions, and to evenings at the theater.  If she desired still further to convince the wretch with the evil eyes of her befriended state, she succeeded; but the wretch and his friends speculated evilly on the relations between her and Septimus Dix.  They credited her with pots of money.  Zora, however, walked serene, unconscious of slander, enjoying herself prodigiously.  Secure in her scorn and hatred of men she saw no harm in her actions.  Nor was there any, from the point of view of her young egotism and inexperience.  It scarcely occurred to her that Septimus was a man.  In some aspects he appealed to her instinctive motherhood like a child.  When she met him one day coming out of one of the shops in the arcade, wearing a newly bought Homburg hat too small for him, she marched him back with a delicious sense of responsibility and stood over him till he was adequately fitted.  In other aspects he was like a woman in whose shy delicacy she could confide.  She awoke also to a new realization—­that of power.  Now, to use power with propriety needs wisdom, and the woman