nattainable
perfection, which endeavoured to change and decorate the actuality. More
than Stephen, perhaps, she had faced life; but she had not accepted it
without rebellion. She had learned from disappointment to see things as
they are; but deep in her heart some unspent fire of romance, some
imprisoned esthetic impulse, sought continually to gild and enrich the
experience of the moment. And this girl, so young, so ingenuous, so
gallant and so appealing, stood in Corinna's mind for the poetic
wildness of her spirit, for all that she had seen in a vision and had
missed in reality.

When the car reached the Square, it turned sharply north. Sometimes it
passed through lighted spaces and sometimes through pools of darkness;
and as it went on rapidly, it seemed to Corinna that it was the one
solid fact in a night that she imagined. Patty was very still; but
Corinna felt the warm clasp of her hand, and heard her soft breathing,
which became a part of the muffled undercurrent of the sleeping city. In
all those closely packed houses, where the obscurity was broken here and
there by a lighted window, other human beings were breathing, sleeping,
dreaming, like Patty and herself, of some impractical and visionary
to-morrow. Of something which had never been, but still might be! Of
something which they had just missed, but might find when the sun rose
again! Of a miracle that might occur at any moment and make everything
different! It was after midnight; and to Corinna it seemed that the
darkness had released the collective spirit of the city, which would
retreat again into itself with the breaking of dawn. Once a cry sounded
far off and was hushed almost immediately; once a light flashed and went
out in the window beneath a roof; but as the car sped on by rows of
darkened tenements, the mysterious penumbra of the night appeared to
draw closer and closer, as if that also were a phantom of the
encompassing obscurity.

"Is this the aunt you told me of, Patty?" asked Corinna abruptly.

"Yes, I went to see her once--not long ago. I promised her that I'd come
back when she sent for me. She wanted to tell me something, but she was
so ill that she couldn't remember what it was. It was about Father, she
said."

"Stephen will come for us after he has taken Margaret home. I gave him
the number."

Patty turned and gave her a long look. They were passing under an
electric light at the time, and Corinna thought, as she looked into the
g