He overslept. It must have been nearly noon when he woke, and then he was wakened only by a pounding at the door of his room. Fat Mme. Refrogné had brought him a cable-message. When she had gone, he opened it, surprised at once by its extravagant length. It was from Cora; a modern miracle had happened: there was oil in the black keeping of the plot of ground that only sentiment had so long bade them retain in the little Ohio town. Cartaret was rich.... * * * * * When the first force of the shock was over, when he could realize, in some small measure, what that message meant to him, Cartaret's earliest thought was of the Lady of the Rose. Holding the bit of paper as tightly as if it were itself his riches and wanted to fly away on the wings that had brought it, he staggered, like a drunken man, to the door of the Room Opposite. He knocked, but received no answer. A clock struck mid-day. Vitoria had probably gone to her class, and Chitta to her marketing. A mad impulse to spread the good news possessed him. It was as if telling the news were recording a deed that there was only a brief time to record: he must do it at once in order to secure title. He knew that his friends, if they were in funds, would soon be gathered at the Café Des Deux Colombes. When he passed the rue St. André Des Arts, he remembered Fourget. Cartaret was ashamed that his memory had been so tardy. Fourget had helped him in his heavy need; Fourget should be the first to know of his affluence.... The old dealer, his bushy brows drawn tight together, his spectacles gleaming, was trying to say "No" to a lad with a picture under his arm--a crestfallen lad that was a stranger to Cartaret. "Let me see the picture," said Cartaret, without further preface. He put out a ready hand. The boy blushed. Cartaret had been abrupt and did not present the appearance of a possible purchaser. "If you please," urged Cartaret. "I may care to buy." Fourget gaped. The boy turned up his canvas--an execrable daub. "I'll buy that," said Cartaret. "Are you mad?" asked Fourget. "Bring back that picture to M. Fourget in half an hour," pursued the heedless American, "and he will give you for it two hundred francs that he will have lent me and that I shall have left with him." He pushed the stammering lad out of the shop and turned to Fourget. "Are you drunk?" asked the dealer, changing the form of his suspicions. "Fourget," cried Cartaret, clapping his friend on the back, "I shall never be hungry again--never--never--never! Look at that." He produced the precious cable-message. "That piece of paper will feed me all my life long. It will buy me houses, horses, motors, steamship-tickets. It looks like paper, Fourget." He spread it under Fourget's nose. "But it isn't; it's a dozen suits of clothes a year; it's a watch-and-chain, a diamond scarf-pin (if I'd wear one!); it's a yacht. It's an oil-well, Fourget--and a godsend!"