She, on her side, gave him such of her confidences as were meet for masculine ears. Naturally she impressed upon him the fact that his sex was abhorrent to her in all its physical, moral, and spiritual manifestations. Septimus, on thinking the matter over, agreed with her. Memories came back to him of the men with whom he had been intimate. His father, the mechanical man who had cogs instead of corpuscles in his blood, Wiggleswick the undesirable, a few rowdy men on his staircase at Cambridge who had led shocking lives--once making a bonfire of his pyjamas and a brand-new umbrella in the middle of the court--and had since come to early and disastrous ends. His impressions of the sex were distinctly bad. Germs of unutterable depravity, he was sure, lurked somewhere in his own nature. "You make me feel," said he, "as if I weren't fit to black the boots of Jezebel." "That's a proper frame of mind," said Zora. "Would you be good and tie this vexatious shoestring?" The poor fool bent over it in reverent ecstasy, but Zora was only conscious of the reddening of his gills as he stooped. This, to her, was the charm of their intercourse: that he never presumed upon their intimacy. When she remembered the prophecy of the Literary Man from London, she laughed at it scornfully. Here was a man, at any rate, who regarded her beauty unconcerned, and from whose society she derived no emotional experiences. She felt she could travel safely with him to the end of the earth. This reflection came to her one morning while Turner, her maid, was brushing her hair. The corollary followed: "why not?" "Turner," she said, "I'll soon have seen enough of Monte Carlo. I must go to Paris. What do you think of my asking Mr. Dix to come with us?" "I think it would be most improper, ma'am," said Turner. "There's nothing at all improper about it," cried Zora, with a flush. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself." CHAPTER IV At Monte Carlo, as all the world knows, there is an Arcade devoted to the most humorously expensive lace, diamond and general vanity shops in the universe, the Hôtel Métropole and Ciro's Restaurant. And Ciro's has a terrace where there are little afternoon tea-tables covered with pink cloths.