name was Callender, they were wealthy, and the track beaten by the golden
feet of their predecessors was good enough for them. They were generous and
kindly. There was no subtle complexity in their tastes. They liked the
best, they paid for it, and they got it. The women were charming,
cultivated and eager for new sensations. They found Zora a new sensation,
because she had that range of half tones which is the heritage of a child
of an older, grayer civilization. Father and son delighted in her. Most men
did. Besides, she relieved the family tedium. The family knew the Paris of
the rich Anglo-Saxon and other rich Anglo-Saxons in Paris. Zora accompanied
them on their rounds. They lunched and dined in the latest expensive
restaurants in the Champs Elysées and the Bois; they went to races; they
walked up and down the Rue de la Paix and the Avenue de l'Opéra and visited
many establishments where the female person is adorned. After the theater
they drove to the Cabarets of Montmartre, where they met other Americans
and English, and felt comfortably certain that they were seeing the
naughty, shocking underside of Paris. They also went to the Louvre and to
the Tomb of Napoleon. They stayed at the Grand Hotel.

Zora saw little of Septimus. He knew Paris in a queer, dim way of his own,
and lived in an obscure hotel, whose name Zora could not remember, on the
other side of the river. She introduced him to the Callenders, and they
were quite prepared to receive him into their corporation. But he shrank
from so vast a concourse as six human beings; he seemed to be overawed by
the multitude of voices, unnerved by the multiplicity of personalities. The
unfeathered owl blinked dazedly in general society as the feathered one
does in daylight. At first he tried to stand the glare for Zora's sake.

"Come out and mix with people and enjoy yourself," cried Zora, when he was
arguing against a proposal to join the party on a Versailles excursion. "I
want you to enjoy yourself for once in your life. Besides--you're always so