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.
"My marriage was a mistake. I was very unhappy. I have had a hard life," said Alice, and her lower lip, as soft as a baby's, trembled nervously. How little character there was in her face, how little of anything except that indefinable allurement of sex!