"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 pêche 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."
She was ever so little piqued at his apparent indifference. But if men like Septimus Dix did not take women for granted, where would be the chivalry and faith of the children of the world? He accepted her unquestioningly as the simple Trojan accepted the Olympian lady who appeared to him clad in grace (but otherwise scantily) from a rosy cloud.
"You are yourself," he said, "and that has been enough for me."