Then they both laughed. Corinna stretched out a hand. “Forgive me,” she said. “I’ve been standing nearly all day in front of the tube station, dressed in a green, mauve and white sandwich-board and selling newspapers, and I’m dog-tired and miserable. I would ask you to have some tea, but that would only bring out Isabel, who would talk our heads off. Why have you left Brantôme?”
He told her of Bigourdin’s proposal and of Fortinbras’s counsel; but he made no reference to the flashing of the divine Lucilla across his path. Once he had confessed to her the kiss of the onion-eating damsel who had married the plumber. She had jested but understood. His romantic knight-errant passion for Lucilla was stars above her comprehension. When he mentioned the fact of the death of Mrs. Fortinbras, Corinna softened.
“Poor little Félise! It must have been a great sorrow to her. I’ll write to her. She’s a dear little girl.” She paused for a few moments. “Now, look here, Martin,” she said, seizing a fragile poker and smiting a black lump of coal the size of a potato, “it strikes me that as fools we’re very much in the same box. We’ve both thrown over a feather-bed existence. I’ve refused to marry Bigourdin and incidentally to run the Hôtel des Grottes, and you have refused to run the Hôtel des Grottes and incidentally marry Félise.”
“There was never any question of my marrying Félise,” cried Martin hotly.
She scrambled to her feet and flung an impatient arm.
“You make me tired. Have you a grain of sense in your head or an ounce of blood in your body?”
Martin also rose. “And you?” he countered. “What have you?”
“Neither,” said Corinna.
“In that case,” said Martin, gathering up hat, stick and gloves, “I don’t see why we should continue a futile conversation.”
He devoid of sense and blood! He who had probed the soul of Félise and found there virgin indifference! He who had flung aside a gross temptation. He who was consumed with a burning passion for an incomparable goddess! A chasm thousands of miles wide yawned between him and Corinna. In the same box, indeed! He quivered with indignation. She regarded him curiously, through narrowed eyes.