la République. He had known her many years, and as she was at the point of
death he comforted her with blood-puddings and flowers and hams and the
ministrations of an indignant physician. But at the time Septimus hid his
Good Samaritanism under a cloud of vagueness.

Then came a period during which Zora lost him altogether. Days passed. She
missed him. Life with the Callenders was a continuous shooting of rapids. A
quiet talk with Septimus was an hour in a backwater, curiously restful. She
began to worry. Had he been run over by an omnibus? Only an ever-recurring
miracle could bring him safely across the streets of a great city. When the
Callenders took her to the Morgue she dreaded to look at the corpses.

"I do wish I knew what has become of him," she said to Turner.

"Why not write to him, ma'am?" Turner suggested.

"I've forgotten the name of his hotel," said Zora, wrinkling her forehead.

The name of the Hôtel Quincamboeuf, where he lodged, eluded her memory.

"I do wish I knew," she repeated.

Then she caught an involuntary but illuminating gleam in Turner's eye, and
she bade her look for hairpins. Inwardly she gasped from the shock of
revelation; then she laughed to herself, half amused, half indignant. The
preposterous absurdity of the suggestion! But in her heart she realized
that, in some undefined human fashion, Septimus Dix counted for something
in her life. What had become of him?

At last she found him one morning sitting by a table in the courtyard of