A flaming picture of gigantic wrath, he swept with him to the door, whence he hurled him bodily forth. There was a dull thud. And that, as far as the three commercial travellers (standing agape with their napkins at their throats), Corinna, Martin, Félise and Bigourdin were concerned, was the end of Polydore. Bigourdin, with an agility surprising in so huge a man, was in an instant by Corinna’s side with finger bowl full of water and a clean napkin. “Mademoiselle, that such a bestial personage should have dared to soil your purity with his uncleanness makes me mad, makes me capable of assassinating him. Permit me to remove his abominable contamination.” “Let me do it, _mon oncle_,” said Félise, who had run across. But Bigourdin waved her aside, and with reverent touch, as though she were a goddess, he cleansed Corinna. She underwent the operation in her cool way and when it was over smiled her thanks at Bigourdin. “Mademoiselle Corinna,” he cried, “what can I say to you? What can I do for you? How can I repair such an outrage as you have suffered in my house? You only have to command and everything I have is yours. Command—insist—ordain.” He spread his arms wide, an agony of appeal in his eyes. Martin, who had started to his feet, in order to save Corinna from the grip of the intoxicated Polydore, but had been anticipated by the impetuous rush of Bigourdin, gazed for a moment or two at his host and then gasped, as his vision pierced into the huge man’s soul. This perfervid declaration was not the good innkeeper’s apology for a waiter’s disgusting behaviour. It was the blazing indignation of a real man at the desecration inflicted by another on the body of the woman he loved. A shiver of comprehension of things he had never comprehended before swept through Martin from head to foot. He knew with absolute knowledge that should she rise and, with a nod of her head, invite Bigourdin to follow her to the verandah, she could be mistress absolute of Bigourdin’s destiny. He held his breath, for the first time in his dull life conscious of the meaning of love of women, conscious of eternal drama. He looked at Corinna smiling with ironic curl of lip up at the impassioned man. And he had an almost physical feeling within him as though his heart sank like a stone. But a week ago she had declared, with a vulgarity of which he had not thought her capable, that she had had the flirtation of her life with Bigourdin. She must have known then, she must know now that the man was in soul-strung earnest. What was her attitude to the major things of Life? His brain worked swiftly. If, in her middle-class English snobbery, she despised the French innkeeper, why did she admit him to her social plane on which alone flirtation—he had a sensitive gentleman’s horror of the word—was possible? If she accepted him as a social equal, recognising in him, as he, Martin, recognised, all that was vital in modern France—if she accepted him,