ing, as if an essential faculty of soul had been either
left out by Nature, or refined away by the subtle impersonal processes
of his mind.

Clearly there had been an error of judgment in placing him beside Mrs.
Stribling. His taste was too fastidious to respond to her palpable
allurements. She would have had a better chance with Vetch, for the
flippant pleasantry with which Benham responded to the beaming
enchantress was clothed in the very tone and look he had used with Patty
Vetch in the drawing-room. Yes, it was futile to stray too far from
one's type. Rose Stribling had failed to interest Benham, mused Corinna,
for the same reason that she herself had been unable to arouse the
admiration of Gideon Vetch. The lesson it taught, she repeated
cynically, was simply that it was futile to stray too far from one's
type. Vetch had talked to her as he might have talked to her father or
to the husky warrior on her right; but he had never once looked at her.
His attention would be arrested by large, sudden, bright things like the
rosy curve of Mrs. Stribling's shoulders or the shining ropes of her
hair.

"How absurd it was to imagine that I could compare with that!" thought
Corinna with amusement. Her sense of defeat was humorous rather than
resentful; yet she realized that it contained a disagreeable sting. Was
her long day over at last? Had the sun set on her conquests? Had her
adventurous return to power been merely a prelude to the ultimate
Waterloo? Lifting her eyes suddenly from her plate she met the deep
meditative gaze of John Benham across the marigolds on the table; and
the faint flush that kindled her face made her eyes glow like embers.
Had he read the thought in her mind? Was the tenderness in his glance
only an ironical comment on the ignominious end of her Hundred Days?

She glanced away quickly, and as she did so she looked straight into the
eyes of Alice Rokeby--those eyes that asked perpetually of life, "Why
have you passed me by?"

CHAPTER VIII

THE WORLD AND PATTY

On the way home, leaning against her father who had not spoken since the
car started, Patty shut her eyes and went over, one by one, the
incidents of the dinner. What had she done that was right? What had she
done that was wrong? Was her dress just what it ought to have been? Had
she talked to Stephen Culpeper about the things people are supposed to
discuss at a dinner? Had he seen how embarrassed she was beneath her
pretence of g