Corinna’s English upper middle-class pride had revolted at the suggestion that she should become an employee in a little bourgeois inn; but her knowledge of French provincial life painfully quickened by her experience of yesterday assured her that she was the recipient of the greatest honour that lies in the power of a French citizen to offer. An English innkeeper daring to propose marriage she would have scorched with blazing indignation, and the bewildered wretch would have gone away wondering how he had mistaken for an angel such a Catherine-wheel of a woman. But against Bigourdin, son of other traditions so secure in his integrity, so delicate in his approach, so intensely sincere in his appeal, she could find within her not a spark of anger. All conditions were different. The plane of their relations was different. She would never have confessed to a flirtation with an English innkeeper. Besides, she had a really friendly feeling for Bigourdin, something of admiration. He was so big, so simple, so genuine, so intelligent. In spite of Martin’s complaint that she could not realise the spirit of modern France, her shrewd observation had missed little of the moral and spiritual phenomena of Brantôme. She was well aware that Bigourdin, _petit hôtelier_ that he was, stood for many noble ideals outside her own narrow horizon. She respected him; she also derived feminine pleasure from his small mouth and the colour of his eyes. But the possibility of marrying him had never entered her head. She had not the remotest intention of marrying him now. The proposal was grotesque. As soon as she got clear of the place she would throw back her head and roar with laughter at it; a gleeful little devil was already dancing at the back of her brain. For the moment, however, she did not laugh: on the contrary a queer thrill again ran through her body, and she felt a difficulty in looking him in the face. After having thrown herself at a man’s head yesterday only to be spurned, her outraged spirit found solace in having to-day another man suppliant at her feet. Of his sincerity there could be no possible question. This big, good man loved her. For all her independent ways and rackety student experiences, no man before had come to her with the loyalty of deep love in his eyes, no man had asked her to be his wife. Absurd as it all was, she felt its flattering deliciousness in every fibre of her being. “_Eh bien_, Mademoiselle Corinne, what do you answer?” asked Bigourdin, after a breathless silence during which, with head bent forward over the table, she had been nervously fiddling with her gloves. “You are very kind, Monsieur Bigourdin. I never thought you felt like that towards me,” she said falteringly, like any well-brought-up school-girl. “You should have told me.” “To have expressed my feelings before, Mademoiselle, would have been to take advantage of your position under my roof.”