er is going to some dreadful public dinner," answered Corinna. "I
stayed with him here so he wouldn't have to wait at the club. It won't
matter about me. The car is coming for me, and I don't dine until eight.
Stay awhile and we'll talk," she added with her cheerful smile. "I
haven't seen you for ages, and you look as if you had something to tell
me."

"I have," he said; and then he turned from her to the two old men who
were talking drowsily in voices that sounded as far off to Stephen as
the murmuring of bees in summer meadows. He knew that it was real, that
it was the life he had always lived, and yet he couldn't get rid of the
feeling that Corinna and the two old men and the charming surroundings
were all part of a play, and that in a little while he should go out of
the theatre and step back among the sordid actualities.

"The General and I are having our little chat before dinner," said Judge
Page, a sufficiently ornamental old gentleman to have decorated any
world or any fireside--imposing and distinguished as a portrait by Sir
Thomas Lawrence, with a crown of silvery hair and the shining dark eyes
of his daughter. He still carried himself, for all his ironical comment,
like an ambassador of the romantic school. "It is a sad day for your
fighting man," he concluded gaily, "when the only stimulant he can get
is the conversation of an old fogy like me."

"Your fighting man," old General Powhatan Plummer, who hadn't smelt
powder for more than half a century, chuckled as he always did at the
shrewd and friendly pleasantries of the Judge. He was a jocular,
tiresome, gregarious soul, habitually untidy, creased and rumpled, who
was always thirsty, but who, as the Judge was accustomed to reply when
Corinna remonstrated, "would divide his last julep with a friend." The
men had been companions from boyhood, and were still inseparable. For
the same delusion makes strange friendships, and the General, in spite
of his appearance of damaged reality, also inhabited that enchanted
fairy-ring where no fact ever entered.

With the bowl of marigolds in her hands, Corinna came over to the
tea-table and stood smiling dreamily at Stephen. The firelight dancing
over her made a riot of colour, and she looked the image of happiness,
though the young man knew that the ephemeral illusion was created by the
red of her gown and the burnished gold of the flowers.

"John Benham sent them to me because I praised his speech," she said.
"Was