A quiver as faint as the shadow of a flower crossed her face. "Yes, I remember. It is an odd feeling. I suppose every one has felt it at times—only each one of us likes to think that he is the particular instance."
"It is trite, I know," he said with a smile, "but feeling is never very original, is it? Only thought is new."
"But I would rather have feeling, wouldn't you?" she asked in a low voice, and sat waiting in a lovely attitude, prepared without and within, for the moment that was approaching. There was no excitement in such things now, she had had too much experience; but there was an unending interest.
"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.