James Femms put forth the power of his will against his habit of thinking in such intorted, raffled inversions as these. Confronted by a problem, he resolved to ratiocinate straightforwardly, in a manner as candidly unintricate as the spleened finials of the _porte-chapeaux_ which, at the moment, engaged the brazen eloquence of the vendor. He would not think, he decided, in the style of an Empire girandole, but in the direct and honest simplicity of, say, that spleened and half-groined becket. This was James Femms, not as he had been, but as he had come to be, a man colored by the years, so that his glass—a walnut caracole, wonderfully woodmarked—seemed to invest him with a patina, so that, indeed, he resembled one of those Victorian antiques, ornately ruinous, which were the dominant, as it were, of his existence. His passion for the lost art of the period had come to affect him in cunning, secret ways, to inform his spirit with a cold flame of rebellion against himself and his environment; he detested his body, designed, he reflected bitterly, after the Roycroft manner and as innocent of decorative values; he abandoned, in his moments of surrender, the artless names which had been foisted on his helpless infancy; he ceased to think of himself as James Femms, and softened, mellowed, ornamented the harsh, stern sounds with Gallic fancies. In his dreams he became a figure of romance, pinch-waisted, nobly whiskered, an illustration from a time-stained page of “Godey’s Lady’s-Book,” a man who could bear, with corseted grace, a name like Jambes des Femmes! He became, for the time being, this Jambes des Femmes; he looked about him with the very elegance and grace of a des Femmes. The salon, he observed, was filled by people for whom Jambes des Femmes must feel no more than a gently supercilious distaste; there were faces familiar enough to James Femms: Kitchler, the bulbous, raffish dealer, one sienna eye cocked contemptuously at the _porte-chapeaux_, a fleshpot finger lifted in token of a careless bid; there were others as foreign to the mood of Jambes des Femmes—sly, chaffering professionals and the inevitable scattering of amateurs. Here, he concluded, there was no one capable of setting up in him those telepathic vibrations of which, baffled and distrait, he was obstinately aware. His glance moved back to the _porte-chapeaux_. He had examined it, of course, before the sale and decided, with a lingering regret, to make no offer for it. Horsechestnut—he discarded the coarse term; James Femms must use it, when he spoke, but Jambes des Femmes might think in more gracious wise: _noisette à cheval_—it was a fine piece, des Femmes admitted, a magnificent affair, save for but the one fatal defect. And he had always, he reflected, adored _noisette à cheval_.