He shook his head not in denial, but in bewilderment. "I realized that I
had made a mistake," he said slowly, "but I believed that I had put it
out of my life--that we had both put it out of our lives. There were so
many more important things--the war and coming face to face with death
in so many forms. Oh, I confess that what is important to you, appears
to me to be merely on the surface of life. I have been trying to fulfil
other responsibilities--to live up to the demands on me--I had got down
to realities--"

A laugh broke from her lips, which had grown so stiff that they hurt her
when she tried to smile. "Realities!" she exclaimed, "and yet you must
have seen her face as I saw it to-day."

For the third time, in that expressionless tone which covered a nervous
irritation, he repeated gravely, "I am sorry."

"There is nothing more real," she went on presently, "there is nothing
more real than that look in the face of a living thing."

For the first time her words seemed to reach him. He was trying with all
his might, she perceived, he was spiritually fumbling over the effort to
feel and to think what she expected of him. With his natural fairness he
was honestly struggling to see her point of view.

"If it is really like that," he said, "What can I do?"

All her life, it seemed to Corinna, she had been adjusting the
difficulties and smoothing out the destinies of other persons. All her
life she had been arranging some happiness that was not hers. To-night
it was the happiness of Alice Rokeby, an acquaintance merely, a woman to
whom she was profoundly indifferent, which lay in her hands.

"There is something that you can do," she said lightly, obeying now that
instinct for things as they ought to be, for surface pleasantness, which
warred in her mind with her passion for truth. "You can go to see her
again."

CHAPTER XX

CORINNA FACES LIFE

AT nine o'clock the next morning Corinna came through the sunshine on
the flagged walk and got into her car. She was wearing her smartest
dress of blue serge and her gayest hat of a deep old red. Never had she
looked more radiant; never had she carried her glorious head with a more
triumphant air.

"Stop first at Mrs. Rokeby's, William," she said to the chauffeur, "and
while I am there you may take this list to market."

As the car rolled off, her eyes turned back lovingly to the serene
brightness of the garden into which she had infused her passion for