inctions to a level, all diversities to an average?

Turning away from the mirror, Corinna glanced over the charming room,
with the wood fire, the white bearskin rug, the ivory bed draped in blue
silk, the long windows opening on the garden terrace and the starlit
darkness. There had been luxury always. Money she had had in abundance;
yet there had been no hour in the last twenty years when she would not
have exchanged it all--everything that money could bring her--for the
dinner of herbs where love was. She had possessed everything except the
one thing she had wanted. She had served the tin gods in temples of gold
and jade. With the deep instinct for perfection in her blood, she had
spent her life in an endless compromise with the inferior.

"Was there something lacking in me?" she asked now of her glowing
reflection. "Was there some vital spark left out when I was born? And
to-night? Why should I care how it goes? What is Rose Stribling to me or
I to her?" Why should she still cherish that dull resentment, that
smothered sense of injury in her heart? Was it the burden of her
inheritance, the weakness of the older races, that she could not
forget? She had loved a man who was unworthy; she had loved him for no
better reason, she understood now, than a superficial charm, a romantic
appeal. The fault was in the man, she knew, yet she had forgiven the
man long ago, while she still hated Rose Stribling. Perversity,
inconsistency--but it was her nature, and she could not overcome it. "If
she had ever loved him, I might have forgiven her," she thought, "but
she cared for him as little as she cares for Gideon Vetch to-day. It was
vanity then, and it is vanity now. You cannot hurt her heart--only her
pride--"

Her father called from the stairs; and with a last swift glance at her
image, she caught up a fan of ostrich plumes and a wrap of peacock-blue
velvet. She had never looked more brilliant in her life, not even on
that June morning twenty-five years ago, when, coloured like a rose, she
had been married to Kent Page beneath a bower of roses. She had lost
much since then, freshness, innocence, the trusting heart and the
transparent gaze, but she had lost neither charm nor radiance.

"So we are invited to meet Gideon Vetch," remarked the Judge as they
went down the steps; and from the whimsical sound of his voice, she knew
that there was a smile on his face. The house, with its picturesque
English front half hidden by Virgi