"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 pêche Melba which
she was going to put in her mouth, "I wonder whether you have the faintest
idea who I am and what I am and what I'm doing here all by myself, and why
you and I are lunching together in this delightful fashion. You have told
me all about yourself--but you seem to take me for granted."

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.