He had encountered a stony-faced, wrong-headed young man on the terrace of Shepheard’s Hotel the noon before he sailed, and found all his nostrums for happiness high-handedly rejected. Martin had been an idle woman’s toy, a fiery toy as it turned out; and when she burned her fingers, she had dropped him. So much was obvious; most of it he had foreseen. He had counted on eventual declaration and summary dismissal; but he had not reckoned on a prelude of reciprocated sentiment. Contrary to habit, Martin gave him but a confused view of his state of mind. The unhappy lover would hear not a word against his peerless lady. On the other hand, his love for her had blasted his existence. This appalling fact, though he did not proclaim it so heroically, he allowed Fortinbras to apprehend. He neither reproached him for past advice nor asked for new. To the suggestion that he should return to Brantôme and accept Bigourdin’s offer, he turned a deaf ear. He had cut himself adrift; he must go whithersoever winds and tides should carry him, and they were carrying him far from Périgord. “In what direction?” Fortinbras had enquired. “Thank Heaven, I don’t know myself,” he had answered. “Anyhow, I am going to seek my fortune. I must have money and power so that I can snap my fingers at the world. That’s what I’m going to live for.” And soon after that declaration he had wrung Fortinbras by the hand, and hailing an _arabeah_ had driven off into the unknown. Fortinbras had felt like the hen who sees her duckling brood sail away down the brook. He had lost control of his disciple; he mattered nothing to the young man setting forth on his wild-goose chase after fortune. His charming little scheme had failed. He anticipated the reproaches of Bigourdin, the accusation in the eyes of Félise. “Why did you side with the enemy? Why did you drive Martin away?” . . . He felt old and lonely, a pathetic failure; so he walked the second-class deck with listless shoulders and bowed head, his hands in his pockets. “_Tiens!_ Monsieur Fortinbras! who would have thought it?” cried a fresh voice. He looked up and saw a dark-eyed girl, her head enveloped in a motor-veil, who extended a friendly hand. “_Mademoiselle_ . . .” he began uncertainly. “_Mais oui!_ Eugénie Dubois. You must remember me. There was also _le grand Jules_—Jules Massart.” “Yes, I remember,” he said courteously, with a wan smile. “You saved us both from a pretty mess.” “I remember the saving; but I forget the mess. It is my rule always to forget such things.” She laughed gaily, burst into an account of herself. She was a modiste in the great Paris firm of Odille et Compagnie, which had a branch at Cairo. Now she was recalled for the Paris and London season. “_Et justement_”—she plucked at his sleeve and led him to a seat—“I am in a tangle of an affair which keeps me awake of nights. You fall upon me from the skies like an angel. Be good and give me a consultation.”