With a faintness of the heart rather than the mind, Corinna looked through the doorway, and saw the face of Alice Rokeby glimmering narcissus white in the dusk of the drawing-room.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SIXTH SENSE

As Corinna went forward, with that strange premonitory chill at her heart, it seemed to her that all the fragrance of the garden floated toward her with a piercing sweetness that was the very essence of youth and spring.  Through the wide-open French windows she could see the garden terrace, the pale rows of iris, and the straight black cedars rising against the pomegranate-coloured light of the afterglow.  A few tall white candles were shining in old silver candlesticks; but it was by the vivid tint in the sky that she saw the large, frightened eyes of the woman who was waiting for her.

“If I had only known you were here, I should have hurried home,” began Corinna cordially.  Drawing a chair close to her visitor, she sat down with a movement that was protecting and reassuring.  Her quick sympathies were already aroused.  She surmised that Alice Rokeby had come to her because she was in trouble; and it was not in Corinna’s nature to refuse to hear or to help any one who appealed to her.

Alice threw back her lace veil as if she were stifled by the transparent mesh.  “In the shop there are so many interruptions,” she answered.  “I wanted to see you—­” Breaking off hurriedly, she hesitated an instant, and then repeated nervously, “I wanted to see you—­”

Corinna smiled at her.  “Would you like to go out into the garden?  May is so lovely there.”

“No, it is very pleasant here.”  Alice made a vague, helpless gesture with her small hands, and said for the third time, “I wanted to see you—­”

“I am afraid you are not well.”  Corinna spoke very gently.  “Perhaps it is not too late for tea, or may I get you a glass of wine?  All winter I’ve intended to go and inquire because I heard you’d been ill.  It has been so long since we really saw anything of each other; but I remember you quite well as a little girl—­such a pretty little girl you were too.  You are ever so much younger, at least ten years younger, than I am.”

As she rippled on, trying to give the other time to recover herself, she thought how lovely Alice had once been, and how terribly she had broken since her divorce and her illness.  She would always be appealing—­the kind of woman with whom men easily fell in love—­but one so soon reached the end of mere softness and prettiness.

“Yes, you were one of the older girls,” answered Alice, “and I admired you so much.  I used to sit on the front porch for hours to watch you go by.”

“And then I went abroad, and we lost sight of each other.”

“We both married, and I got a divorce last year.”

“I heard that you did.”  It seemed futile to offer sympathy.