“Then it isn’t too late?” he asked quickly; and again after a pause in which she did not answer:  “Corinna, is it too late?”

For a minute longer she looked up at him in silence.  The glow was still in her eyes; the smile was still on her lips; and it seemed to him that she was wrapped in some enchantment which wrought not in actual life but in allegory—­that the light in which she moved belonged less to earth than to Botticelli’s springtime.  Was romance, after all, he thought sharply, the only reality?  Could one never escape it?

While he looked down on her she had stirred, as if she were awaking from a dream, or a memory, and stretched out her hand.

“Is it ever too late,” she responded, “as long as there is any happiness left in the world?”

She smiled as she answered him; but suddenly her smile faded and that faint shadow passed again over her face.  In the very moment when he had bent toward her, there had drifted before her gaze the soft anxious eyes of Alice Rokeby, and the look in them as they followed John Benham that evening a week ago.

“Oh, my dear,” said Benham softly.  Then his voice broke and he drew back hurriedly, for a figure had darkened the low window, and a minute afterward the door opened and Patty Vetch entered the room.

“The latch was not fastened, so I came in,” she began, and stopped as her look fell on Benham.  “I—­I hope you don’t mind,” she added in confusion.

CHAPTER X

PATTY AND CORINNA

Patty had come straight to Corinna after a conversation with Stephen.  She needed sympathy, and she had meant to be frank and confiding; but when Benham left them alone in the lovely room, which made her feel as if she had stepped into one of the stained glass windows in the old church she attended, her courage failed, and she forgot all the impulsive words she had learned by heart in the street.

“I am so glad,” said Corinna sweetly.  “I went to see you after luncheon to-day, and I was very much disappointed not to find you at home.”

“That was why I came,” answered Patty.  “Your card was there when I got in, and I couldn’t bear missing you.”

“That was right, dear.  It was what I hoped you would do.”

Turning back to the fire, Corinna stooped and flung a fresh log on the Florentine andirons.  Then, without glancing at the girl, she sat down in one of the deep chairs by the hearth, and motioned invitingly to a place at her side.  She was determined to win Patty’s heart, and she wanted to be near enough to reach out her hand when the right moment came.  That moment had not come yet, and she knew it, for she was wise from experience.  There was time enough, and she felt no impulse to hasten developments.  She was strongly attracted, and since her sympathy was easily stirred, she wished, without any great desire, to help the girl if she could.  The only way, she realized, was to watch and hope, to play the waiting game as far as this was possible to her active nature.  For, above all things, Corinna hated to wait; and this potent energy of soul, this vital flame, had given the look of winged radiance to her eyes.