And so, started on his course, and helped here and there by a shrewd and sympathetic question, Martin, the ingenuous, told his story, while Corinna, slightly bored, having heard most of it already, occupied herself by drawing a villainous portrait of him on the tablecloth. When he mentioned details unknown to her she paused in her task and raised her eyes. Like her own, his autobiography was a catalogue of incompetence, but it held no record of frustrated ambitions—no record of any ambitious desire whatever. It shewed the tame ass’s unreflecting acquiescence in its lot of drudgery. There had been no passionate craving for things of delight. Why cry for the moon? With a salary of a hundred and thirty-five pounds a year out of which he must contribute to the support of his widowed mother, a man can purchase for himself but little splendour of existence, and Martin was not one of those to whom splendour comes unbought. He had lived, semi-content, in a fog splendour-obscuring, for the last ten years. But this evening the fog had lifted. The glamour of Paris, even the Pantheon and the Eiffel Tower sarcastically mentioned by Corinna, had helped to dispel it. So had Corinna’s sisterly interest in his dull affairs. And so, more than all, had helped the self-analysis formulated under the compelling power of the philanthropist with shiny coat-sleeves and frayed linen, at once priest, lawyer and physician who had pocketed his five francs fee. He talked long and earnestly; and the more he talked and the more minutely he revealed the aridity of his young life, the stronger grew within him a hitherto unknown spirit of revolt. “That’s all,” he said at last, wiping a streaming brow. “And very interesting indeed,” said Fortinbras. “Isn’t it?” said Corinna. “And he never even kissed”—so complete had been Martin’s apologia—“the landlady’s daughter who married the plumber.” She challenged him with a glance. “I swear you didn’t.” With a shy twist of his lips Martin confessed: “Well—I did once.” “Why not twice?” asked Corinna. “Yes, why not?” asked Fortinbras, seeing Martin hesitate, and his smile was archiepiscopal indulgence. “Why but one taste of ambrosial lips?” Martin reddened beneath his olive skin. “I hardly like to say—it seems so indelicate——” “_Allons donc_” cried Corinna. “We’re in Paris, not Wendlebury.” “We must get to the bottom of this, my dear Martin—it’s a privilege I demand from my clients to address them by their Christian names—otherwise how can I establish the necessary intimate _rapport_ between them and myself? So I repeat, my dear Martin, we must have the reason for the rupture or the dissolution or the termination of what seems to be the only romantic episode in your career. I’m not joking,” Fortinbras added gravely, after a pause. “From the psychological point of view, it is important that I should know.” Martin looked appealingly from one to the other—from Fortinbras massively serious to Corinna serenely mocking.