“You are still young. The years and the women’s lips before you are many,” said Fortinbras, laying a comforting touch on Martin’s shoulder. “Opportunity makes the lover as it does the thief. And in the bed-sitting-room in Hickney Heath where you have spent your young life where has been the opportunity? It pleases our Paris-hardened young friend to mock; but I see in you the making of a great lover, a Bertrand d’Allamanon, a Chastelard, one who will count the world well lost for a princess’s smile——” Corinna interrupted. “What pernicious nonsense are you talking, Fortinbras? You’ve got love on the brain to-night. Neither Martin nor I are worrying our heads about it. Love be hanged! We’re each of us worried to death over the problem of how to keep body and soul together without going back to prison and you talk all this drivel about love—at least not to me, but to Martin.” “That qualification, my dear Corinna, upsets the logic of your admirable tirade,” Fortinbras replied calmly, after drinking the remainder of his syrup and soda water. “I speak of love to Martin because his soul is starved, as I’ve already declared. I don’t speak of it to you, because your soul is suffering from indigestion.” “I’ll have another _kummel glacé_,” said Corinna. “It’s a stomachic.” She reached for the bell-pull behind her chair—she had the corner seat. Auguste appeared. Orders were repeated. “How you can drink all that syrup without being sick I can’t understand,” she remarked. “Omnicomprehension is not vouchsafed even to the very young and innocent, my dear,” said Fortinbras. Martin glanced across the table apprehensively. If ever young woman had been set down that young woman was Corinna Hastings. He feared explosion, annihilation of the down-setter. Nothing of the sort happened. Corinna accepted the rebuff with the meekness of a school-girl and sniffed when Fortinbras was not looking. Again Martin was puzzled, unable to divest himself of his old conception of Corinna. She was Corinna, chartered libertine of the land of Rodolfe, Marcel, Schaunard—he had few impressions of the _Quartier Latin_ later than Henri Murger—and her utterances no matter how illogical were derived from godlike inspiration. He hung on her lips for some inspired and vehement rejoinder to the rebuke of Fortinbras. When none came he realised that in the seedily dressed and now profusely perspiring _Marchand de Bonheur_ she had met an acknowledged master. Who Fortinbras was, whence his origin, what his character and social status, how, save by the precarious methods to which he had alluded, he earned his livelihood, Martin had no idea; but he suddenly conceived an immense respect for Fortinbras. The man hovered over both of them on a higher plane of wisdom. From his kind eyes (to Martin’s simple fancy) beamed uncanny power. He assumed the semblance of an odd sort of god indigenous to this Paris wonderworld.