of the cedars. They were as meaningless as
the wind that brought them, or the whirring of the white moth at the
window. Beneath her vacant words and expressionless gestures, which were
like the words and gestures of an automaton, she was conscious of a
profound current of feeling which flowed steadily between Alice Rokeby
and herself; and on this current there was borne all the inarticulate
burden of womanhood. "Poor thing, she wants me to help her," she
thought; but aloud she said only: "The roses are doing so well this
year. They will be the finest I have ever had."

Suddenly Alice lowered her veil and rose. "I must go. It is late," she
said, and held out her hand. Then, while she stood there, with her hand
still outstretched, all that she had left unspoken appeared to rush over
her in a torrent, and she asked rapidly, while her lips jerked like the
lips of a hurt child, "Is it true, Corinna, that you are going to marry
John Benham?"

For an instant Corinna looked at her without speaking. The sympathy in
her heart ceased as quickly as a fountain that is stopped; and she was
conscious only of that lifeless chill with which she had entered the
room. Now that the question had come, she knew that she had dreaded it
from the first moment her eyes had rested on the face of her visitor,
that she had expected it from the instant when she had heard that a
woman awaited her in the house. It was something of which she had been
aware, and yet of which she had been scarcely conscious--as if the
knowledge had never penetrated below the surface of her perceptions. And
it would be so easy, she knew, to evade it now as she had evaded it from
the beginning, to push to-day into to-morrow for the rest of her life.
Nothing stood in her way; nothing but that deep instinct for truth on
which, it seemed to her now, most of her associations with men had been
wrecked. Then, because she was obliged to obey the law of her nature,
she answered simply, "Yes, we expect to be married."

A strangled sound broke from Alice's lips, but she bit it back before it
had formed into a word. The hand that she had thrown out blindly fell on
the fringe of her gown, and she began knitting it together with
trembling fingers. "Has he--does he care for you?" she asked presently
in that hurried voice.

For the second time Corinna hesitated; and in that instant of
hesitation, she broke irrevocably with the past and with the iron rule
of tradition. She knew how he