THE PORTE-CHAPEAUX OF NOISETTE À CHEVAL “Rising in the night, troubled over the yearning of the bassines to be reunited to their original source.” ] Rising, later in the night, convinced at last that his spirit was troubled by the yearning of the bassines to be reunited to their original source, he bore them down and left them in the embrace of the _porte-chapeaux_. Sleep coquetted with him, now, a sleep of caprice, through which, more remotely, James Femms continued to respond to that inanimate yearning, palliated but still passionately unsatisfied. IV A dawn of gusts, with spurts of disingenuous rain, revived James Femms; dressing, he avoided the candor of his glass, harried now by a recurrent thought of Sonoff. He seemed, indeed, to see the old _sonneur_, abroad in this malicious weather, his battered _parapluie_, its proper service forgotten, serving him but as a staff, his garments maculate with party-colored inlays, his glorious hair unhatted. Distantly, elusively, James Femms sensed, now, a relationship between his inchoate mental gropings and that whimsy of Mikail Sonoff. He knew that the old musician, his ears envenomed by the clack of telephone bells, suffered hideously from headache, but did he, James Femms demanded of himself, walk bareheaded in the rains to cool that throbbing capital, or was it, perhaps, because of some sentiment less practical—because of some profound attachment to a hat, too deeply loved, which, lost at last, had moved Sonoff to vow, in this respect, perpetual celibacy? Or was it...? James Femms, percipient though he was, must have failed to draw that gossamer inference; it was an inspiration worthy of the _finesse_ of Jambes des Femmes himself! He saw, now, with a sudden utter certitude, that Sonoff bared his splendid finial to the elements because a hat, any hat, must have revived and deepened his yearning for the _porte-chapeaux_, the _porte-chapeaux_ of _noisette à cheval_ that symbolized all the grace and splendor of Sonoff’s ravished youth! [Illustration: “HE KNEW THE OLD MUSICIAN SUFFERED FROM HEADACHES, BUT DID HE WALK BAREHEADED IN THE RAIN TO COOL HIS HEAD OR PERHAPS BECAUSE OF SOME PROFOUND ATTACHMENT TO A HAT HE HAD ONCE OWNED? HAD HE LOST IT, PERHAPS, AND VOWED NEVER TO HAVE ANOTHER?” ] 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?”