ittle while, was beginning again. While she remained
motionless at the foot of the bed, wild and rebellious thoughts flocked
through Corinna's mind. If she had only held back that message! If she
had only kept Patty away until it was too late! She thought of the girl
a few hours ago, flushed with happiness, dancing under the swinging
garlands of flowers, to the sound of that thunderous music. Dancing
there, with the restless pleasure of youth, while in another street, so
far away that it might have been in a distant city, in a different
world even, this woman, with the face of tragedy, lay dying with that
fretful wail in her ears. A different world it might have been, and yet
what divided her from this other woman except the blind decision of
chance, the difference between beauty and ugliness, nothing more. In
this dingy room, smelling of dust and drugs and the heavy odour of the
ailantus tree, she felt a presence more profoundly real, more poignantly
significant, than any material forms--the presence of those elemental
forces which connect time with eternity. This little room, within its
partial shadow, like the shadow of time itself, was touched with the
solemnity of a cathedral. It seemed to Corinna, with her imaginative
love of life, that a window into experience had opened sharply, a wall
had crumbled. For the first time she understood that the innumerable and
intricate divisions of human fate are woven into a single tremendous
design.

While they waited there in silence the hours dragged on like years. At
last the woman appeared to sleep, and when she opened her eyes again,
her gaze had become clear and lucid.

"Have you sent for them?" she asked.

"Yes, I sent for them," answered the old woman, lowering her voice to a
natural pitch. "The girl is here."

"Patty? Where is she?"

Drawing her hand from Corinna's clasp, Patty moved slowly to the head of
the bed, and standing there beside the deformed old woman, she looked
down on the upturned face.

"I came as I promised. Can I help you?" she asked; and her voice was so
quiet, so repressed, that Corinna looked at her anxiously. How much had
the girl understood? And, if she understood, what difference would it
make in her life--and in Stephen's life?

"I couldn't tell you the other day because of Julius," said the woman,
in a strangled tone. "I couldn't say things before Julius." Then,
glancing toward the door, she asked breathlessly, "Didn't Gideon Vetch
come