He pressed his temples again.
“And it was while I walked that I observed the vanishment of the becket. It was gone. I do not know where, nor how—I only know that the sight of the porte-chapeaux was hateful. I could not endure to behold it. I sold it, and the pain, if no less, was easier to bear.”
James Femms heard him as one who listens to the opaque ventriloquial speech of dreams. Dimly, remotely, but with a dawning fervor of conviction, understanding burst in upon him. He lifted his hands in a swift, furtive movement; his fingers penetrated the plush-like silky depths of Sonoff’s hair. They closed upon a surface that James Femms knew as intimately by touch as if his eyes beheld it through his worm-hole lens. Delicately, with the merciful cruelty of the surgeon, disregarding the anguished shriek of his patient, he drew forth the missing becket. A profound, shuddering sigh came from Sonoff.
With hands that thrilled voluptuously at the delicious caress of that spleened surface, but still were swift and sure to their task, James Femms replaced the becket in its emplacement and stood back, his eyes intoxicated with the charm of the perfect spleen-craft, the cool, proud beauty of the hand-groined base.
The ether, like a restless, moaning sea upon which an instant calm descends, was permeated with a vast, abiding peace.
Sonoff clasped James Femms to him, kissed his cheeks.
PROFILE VIEW OF THE PORTE-CHAPEAUX OF NOISETTE À CHEVAL RECONSTRUCTED AND IN USE
I. The lost becket. II. Bassine
“The pain! It is gone! Ah, mon cher Jambes des Femmes—what can I say to you—how shall I repay you?”