It is a pleasant thing to linger tete-a-tete over lunch on the terrace of the Hotel de Paris.  Outside is the shade of the square, the blazing sunshine beyond the shadow; the fountain and the palms and the doves; the white gaiety of pleasure houses; the blue-gray mountains cut sharp against the violet sky.  Inside, a symphony of cool tones:  the pearl of summer dresses; the snow, crystal, 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 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.”