all was unreal. In
looking back she saw that the festival of her life was an affair of
tinselled splendour and glittering dust. Was this only the impression of
Vetch on her mood? Did he possess some magic gift of personality which
caused the artificial, the counterfeit, to wither in his presence?

Conversation was not animated; and while she listened with a smile to
dreary anecdotes of the War Between the States, she allowed her gaze to
wander slowly down the table to where Alice Rokeby sat, with her large
soft eyes, so vague and wistful, asking of life, "Why have you passed me
by?" Now and then these eyes, which reminded Corinna of the eyes in a
dream, would turn timidly to John Benham, and then there would steal
into them that strange look of hunger, of desperation. What did it mean?
Corinna wondered. Surely there was no truth in the old gossip that she
had heard long ago and forgotten?

John Benham had put a question to the Governor across the table; and he
sat now, leaning a little forward, while he waited for an answer. The
light from the tall white candles, in branched candelabra of the Queen
Anne pattern, fell directly on his handsome austere face, so full of
delicate reserves and fine intentions; and all the disturbing questions
fled from Corinna's mind while she looked at him. Surely, she repeated
to herself, with a triumphant emphasis, surely there was no truth in
that old ugly gossip! The backward sweep of his iron-gray hair
accentuated the height of his forehead, and produced at first sight an
impression of intellectual superiority. His nose was long and slightly
aquiline; his mouth firm and clear-cut, with thin lips that closed
tightly; his chin jutted a little forward, giving a hatchet-like
severity to his profile. It was the face of a fair fighter, of a man who
could be trusted absolutely beyond personal limitations, of a man who
would always keep the vision of the end through any enterprise, who
would always put the curb of expediency on emotional impulses, who would
invariably judge a theory not by its underlying principle, but by its
practical application. A charming face, too, complex and imaginative, a
face which made the rugged and open countenance of the Governor appear
primitive and undeveloped. Corinna admired Benham; she respected him;
she liked--was it even possible, she asked herself, that she loved him?
Yet here again she was conscious of that baffled feeling of inadequacy,
of something want