“_Mon vieux, c’est idiot!_” cried Bigourdin. “What a career,” cried Corinna, with a laugh. “I never thought of that,” said Martin, thumping the table. Fortinbras rubbed his soft hands together. “I don’t deal in the obvious.” “_Mon vieux_, you are laughing at us,” said Bigourdin. “Monsieur Martin, a gentleman, a scholar, a professor——!” “A speck of human dust in search of a soul,” said Fortinbras. “Which he’s going to find among dirty plates and dishes,” scoffed Corinna. “In the eyes of the Distributing Department of the Soul Office of Olympus, where every little clerk is a Deuce of a High God, the clatter of plates and dishes is as important as the clash of armies.” Corinna looked at Bigourdin. “He’s raving mad,” she said. Fortinbras rose unruffled and laid a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “My excellent friend and disciple,” said he, “let us leave the company of these obscurantists, and seek enlightenment in the fresh air of heaven.” Whereupon he led the young man to the terrace and walked up and down discoursing with philosophical plausibility while his white hair caught by the gusty breeze streamed behind like a shaggy meteor. Bigourdin, who had remained standing, sat down again and said apologetically: “My brother-in-law is an oddity.” “I believe you,” assented Corinna. There was a short silence. Corinna felt that the time had come for a dignified retirement. But whither repair at this unconscionably early hour? The hotel resembled now a railway station at which she was doomed to wait interminably, and one spot seemed as good as another. So she did not move. “You have decided then to leave us, Mademoiselle Corinna?” said Bigourdin at last. “I must.” “Is there no means by which I could persuade you to stay? I desire enormously that you should stay.” Her glance met his and lowered. The tone of his voice thrilled her absurdly. She had at once an impulse to laugh and a queer triumphant little flutter of the heart. “To make _pâté de foie gras_? You must have unwarrantable faith in me.” “Perhaps, in the end,” said he soberly, “it might amuse you to make _pâté de foie gras_. Who knows? All things are possible.” He paused for a moment, then bent forward, elbow on table and chin in hand. “This is but a little hotel in a little town, but in it one might find tranquillity and happiness—_enfin_, the significance of things,—of human things. For I believe that where human beings live and love and suffer and strive, there is an eternal significance beneath the commonplace, and if we grasp it, it leads us to the root of life, which is happiness. Don’t you think so, mademoiselle?” “I suppose you’re right,” she admitted dubiously, never having taken the trouble to look at existence from the subjective standpoint. Her attitude was instinctively objective.