And, as if the ghostly emanations of the porte-chapeaux had sought him out in whatever beggar’s den now harbored his decay, had called him forth and guided him hereward, Sonoff himself passed before James Femms’s window, a figure of compassion, a spectacle as insidiously saddening as that Wagner Palace Car which James Femms had once beheld degraded to the indignity of a nocturnal, nickel restaurant.
James Femms cried out to him, the sacrifice already made. Sonoff should have it for his own again, without money and without price!
V
“Headache? And what head would not ache, good little Jambes des Femmes?”
James Femms remembered that it was Sonoff’s quaint pronunciation of his detested name that had first suggested the thought of changing it, in his secret meditations, to the softened grace, the Parisian flavor, of Jambes des Femmes. A rush of gratitude welled in him.
“Sonoff—I have guessed.” He laid his hand horizontally above the pocket where he carried his priceless stylograph, filigreed in the very flower of the Rutherford B. Hayes manner. “It is the heart that aches. And I have found the cure. Come!”
Silently he led the antique sonneur through the entresol and to the porch.
“There!” He flung his hand in a wide, fine gesture.
Sonoff blinked.
“Mon porte-chapeaux.” He spoke with no zest, no vestige of his quondam joie de vivre. “I tired of it, Jambes.”