"I am not a poor dear," retorted Corinna, "and there were a great many things in life for me besides marriage."
"There wouldn't have been in my place," insisted Alice, with a submissive manner but a stubborn mind.
Corinna gazed at her speculatively for a moment; and in her speculation there was the faintest tinge of contempt, the contempt which, in spite of her pity, she felt for all weakness. "I shouldn't have got into your place," she responded presently, "and if I ever found myself there by mistake, I'd make haste to get out of it."
"But suppose you had been like me, Corinna?" The words were a wail of despair.
A laugh rippled like music from Corinna's lips. It was cruel to laugh, she knew, but it was all so preposterous! It was turning things upside down with vehemence when one tried to live by feeling in a world which was manifestly designed for the service of facts. "You ought to have gone on the stage, Alice," she said. "Painted scenery is the only background that is appropriate to you."
Alice sighed. She looked very pretty in her shallow fashion, or Corinna felt that she couldn't have borne it. "You are awfully kind, Corinna," she returned, "but you have so little sentiment."
"I know, my dear, but I have some common sense which has served me very well in its place." As Corinna spoke she got up and roamed restlessly about the room, because the sight of that passive figure, wrapped in wilted plum blossoms, made her feel as if she wanted to scream. "You can't help being a fool, Alice," she said sternly, "and as long as you are a pretty one, I suppose men won't mind. But you must continue to be a pretty one, or it is all over with you."
The face that Alice turned on her showed a curious mixture of humility over the criticism and satisfaction over the compliment. "I know I've lost my looks dreadfully," she replied, grasping the most important point first, "and, of course, I have been a fool about John. If I hadn't cared so much, things might have been different."
Corinna stopped her impatient moving about and looked down on her. "I didn't mean that kind of fool," she retorted; but just what kind of fool she had meant, she thought it indiscreet to explain.
Suddenly, with a dash of nervous energy which appeared to run like a stimulant through her veins, Alice straightened herself and lifted her head. "It is easy for you to say that," she rejoined, "but you have never been loved to desperation and then deserted."