beauty and order and gracious living. Rain had fallen in the night, and
the glowing borders beyond the house shone like jewels in a casket.
Beneath the silvery blue of the sky each separate blade of grass
glistened as if an enchanter's wand had turned it to crystal. The birds
were busily searching for worms on the lawn; as the car passed a flash
of scarlet darted across the road; and above a clear shining puddle
clouds of yellow butterflies drifted like blown rose-leaves.

"How beautiful everything is," thought Corinna. "Why isn't beauty
enough? Why does beauty without love turn to sadness?" Her head, which
had drooped for a moment, was lifted gallantly. "It ought to be enough
just to be alive and not hungry on a morning like this."

The house in which Mrs. Rokeby lived appeared to Corinna, as she
entered it presently, to have given up hope as utterly as its mistress
had done. Though it was nearly ten o'clock, the front pavement had not
been swept, the hall was still dark, and a surprised coloured maid, in a
soiled apron, answered the doorbell.

"Poor thing," thought, Corinna. "I always heard that she was a good
housekeeper. It is queer how soon one's state of mind passes into one's
surroundings. I wonder if unhappiness could ever make me so indifferent
to appearances?" To the maid, who knew her, she said, "I think Mrs.
Rokeby will see me if she is awake. It is only for a minute or two."

Then she went into the drawing-room, where the shades were still down,
and stood looking at the furniture and the curtains which were powdered
with dust. On the table, where the books and photographs were
disarranged and a fancy box of chocolates lay with the top off, there
was a crystal vase of flowers; but the flowers were withered, and the
water smelt as if it had not been changed for a week. Over the
mantelpiece the long gilt-framed mirror reflected, through a gray film,
the darkened room with its forlorn disarrangement. The whole place had
the vague depressing smell of closed rooms, or of dead flowers, the very
odour of unhappiness.

"Poor thing!" thought Corinna again. "That a man should have the power
to make anybody suffer like this!" And beneath her sense of fruitless
endeavour and wasted romance, there awoke and stirred in her the
dominant instinct of her nature, the instinct to bring order out of
confusion, to make the crooked straight, to change discord into
harmony, that irresistible instinct for things as they ought t