“What cat?” asked Corinna.
“The one in Macbeth, Act i, Scene 3, a play by Shakespeare. ‘Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would,” like the poor cat i’ the adage.’ You require development, my dear Corinna, out of the cat stage. You have had your head choked with ideas about things in this soul-suffocating Paris, and the ideas are tormenting you; but you’ve never been at grips with things themselves. As for our excellent Martin, he has not even arrived at the stage of the desirous cat.”
The smile that lit up his coarse, lined features, and the musical suavity of his voice divested the words of offence. Martin, with a laugh, assented to the proposition.
“He, too, needs development,” Fortinbras went on. “Or rather, not so much development as a collection of soul-material from which development may proceed. Your one accomplishment, I understand, is riding a bicycle. Let us take that as the germ from which the tree of happiness may spring. Do you bicycle, Corinna?”
“I can, of course. But I hate it.”
“You don’t,” replied Fortinbras quickly. “You hate your own idea of it. You’ll begin your course of happiness by sweeping away all your ideas concerning bicycling and coming to bicycling itself.”
“I never heard anything so idiotic,” declared Corinna.
“Doubtless,” smiled Fortinbras. “You haven’t heard everything. Go on your knees and thank God for it. I repeat—or amplify my prescription. Go forth both of you on bicycles into the wide world. They will not be Wheels of Chance, but Wheels of Destiny. Go through the broad land of France filling your souls with sunshine and freedom and your throats with salutary and thirst-provoking dust. Have no care for the morrow and look at the future through the golden haze of eventide.”
“There’s nothing I should like better,” said Martin, with a glance at Corinna, “but I can’t afford it. I must get back to London to look out for an engagement.”
Fortinbras mopped his brow with an over-fatigued pocket-handkerchief.