name of John Benham. Then, with an effort of will, she
put the Governor and all that he had said out of her mind. After all,
how little would she ever see of him now--how seldom would their paths
cross in the future! A strange and interesting man, a man who had, in
one instant of mental sympathy, stirred something within her heart that
no one, not even Kent Page, had ever awakened before. For that one
instant a ripple, nothing more, had moved on the face of the deep--of
the deep which was so ancient that it was older even than the blood of
her race. Then the ripple passed and the sunny stillness settled again
on her spirit.

She thought of John Benham easily now; and while she stood there a quiet
happiness shone in her eyes. After the storm and stress of twenty years,
life in this Indian summer of the emotions was like an enclosed garden
of sweetness and bloom. She had had enough of hunger and rapture and
disappointment. Never again would she take up the old search for
perfection, for the starry flower of the heights. Something that she
could worship! So often in the past it had seemed to her that she missed
it by the turn of a corner, the stop on the roadside, by the choice of a
path that led down into the valley instead of up into the hills. So
often her god had revealed the feet of clay just as she was preparing to
scatter marigolds on his altar. It appeared to her as she looked back on
the past, that life had been merely a succession of great opportunities
that one did not grasp, of high adventures that one never followed.

The sound of a motor horn interrupted her reverie, and she saw that a
big open car, with a green body, had turned the corner and was about to
stop at her door. An instant later anger burned in her heart, for she
saw that the car was driven by Rose Stribling. Even a glimpse of that
flaunting pink hollyhock of a woman was sufficient to ruffle the placid
current of Corinna's thoughts. Could she never forget? Must she, who
had long ago ceased to love the man, still be enslaved to resentment
against the woman?

With an ample grace, Mrs. Stribling descended from the car, and crossed
the pavement to the flagged walk which led to the white door of the old
print shop. In her trimly fitting dress of blue serge, with her small
straw hat ornamented by stiff black quills, she looked fresher, harder,
more durably glazed than ever. A slight excess, too deep a carmine in
her smooth cheeks, too high a polish o