ssion of thankfulness. "It was worth coming," she
said, "to hear you say that of Stephen."

When at last she had gone, primly grateful for the scrap of comfort,
Corinna stood for a minute with her eyes on the sunbeams at the window.
Outside there were the roving winds and the restless spirit of April;
and feeling suddenly that she could stand the close walls and the
familiar objects no longer, she put on her hat and gloves and went out
into the street. Scarcely knowing why, with some vague thought that she
might go to see Patty, she turned in the direction of the Capitol
Square, walking with her buoyant grace which seemed a part of the
fugitive beauty of April. The air was so fragrant, the sunshine so
softly burning, that it was as if summer were advancing, not gradually,
but in a single miracle of florescence. It was one of those days which
release all the secret inexpressible dreams of the heart. Every face
that she passed was touched with the wistful longing which is the very
essence of spring. She saw it in the faces of the women who hurried,
warm, flushed, and impatient, from the shops or the markets; she saw it
in the faces of the men returning from work and thinking of freedom; and
she saw it again in the long sad faces of the dray-horses standing
hitched to a city cart at the corner.

In the Square the sunlight lay in splinters over the young grass, which
was dotted with buttercups, and overhead the long black boughs of the
trees were sprinkled with pale green leaves. Back and forth from the
grassy slopes to the winding brick walks, squirrels darted, busy and
joyous; and a few old men, never absent from the benches, were smiling
vaguely at the passers-by.

When she reached the gate of the Governor's house, her wish to see Patty
had vanished, and she decided that she would go on to the library and
ask for a book that she had recently heard John Benham discussing. How
much of her life now, in spite of its active impersonal interests, was
beginning to centre in John Benham! They were planning to be married in
June, and beyond that month of roses, which was once so saturated with
memories of her early romance, she saw ahead of her long years of
tranquil happiness. Well, she could not complain. After all, was not
tranquil happiness the best that life had to offer?

She had ascended the steps of the library, and was about to enter the
swinging doors, when she turned and glanced back at the dappled boughs
of an old