that we might
find a circus rider who was born a president too?" Then before he could
toss back her questions she asked quickly, "After all, he didn't
actually ride, did he?"

Benham shrugged his shoulders, a gesture he had acquired in France.
"I've heard so, but I don't know. They tell queer tales of his early
years. That was before the golden age of the movies, you see; and I
suspect that the movies rather than the war introduced the mock heroic
into politics."

He was still standing at her side, looking down into her upraised eyes,
which made him think of brown velvet. For a long pause after speaking he
remained silent, drinking in the fragrance of the room, the whispering
of the flames, and the dreamy loveliness of Corinna's expression. A
change had come over her face. In the flushed light she looked young and
elusive; and it seemed to him that, beneath the glowing tissue of flesh,
he gazed upon an indestructible beauty of spirit.

"Do you know what I was thinking?" he asked presently. "I was thinking
that I'd known all this before--that I'd been waiting for it always--the
firelight on these splendid colours, the smell of the roses, the sound
of the flames, and the way you looked up at me with that memory in your
eyes. 'I have been here before'."

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 o