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. “I do believe,” she said slowly, “that I’ve knocked some sparks out of you at last.” “You would knock sparks out of a putty dog,” Martin retorted wrathfully. She took hat and stick away from him and laid them on the bamboo table. “Don’t let us quarrel,” she said more graciously. “Sit down again and finish your story. You said something about Egypt and Fortinbras going with you. Why Egypt?” “Why not?” asked Martin. “I suppose Fortinbras pointed a prophetic finger. ‘There lies the road to happiness.’ But what is he doing there himself?” “He is going to talk to the Sphinx,” said Martin. “And when you’ve spent all your capital in riotous living, what are you going to do?” “I don’t know and I don’t care,” said he. “Well, it’s your business, not mine,” said Corinna. “You’re lucky to be able to get out of this beastly climate. I wish I could.” They talked for a while the generalities of travel. Then he asked her to dine with him and go to a theatre. This brought her back to herself. She couldn’t. She had no time. All her evenings were taken up with meetings which she had to attend. And she hadn’t an evening gown fit to wear. “I would rather die than appear in a blouse and skirt in the stalls of a theatre.” “We can go to the pit or upper circle,” said Martin, who had never sat in the stalls in his life. But she declined. The prodigal in the pit was too ludicrous. No. She was conscientious. She had adopted martyrdom as a profession; she was paid for being a martyr; and to martyrdom, so long as it didn’t include voluntary starvation, she would stick until she could find a pleasanter and more lucrative means of livelihood. “It’s all very well for you to talk like that,” said Martin in his sober way, “but how can you call yourself conscientious when you take these people’s money without believing in their cause?” “Who told you I didn’t believe in it?” she cried. “Do you know what it means to be an utterly useless woman? I do. I’m one. It is to prevent replicas of myself in the next generation that I get up at a public meeting and bleat out ‘Votes for Women,’ and get ignominiously chucked. Can’t you see?” “No,” said Martin. “Your attitude is too Laodicean.” “What?” snapped Corinna. “It’s somewhere in the Bible. The Laodiceans were people who blew both hot and cold.” “My father found scriptural terms for me much more picturesque than that,” said Corinna, with a laugh. A door opened and the frozen, blue-nosed head of Miss Banditch appeared. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Corinna, but are we never going to have tea?”