n't it nice of him?"

"He always does nice things when one doesn't expect them," he answered.

Corinna laughed. "Is it because they are nice that he does them?" she
inquired with a touch of malice. "Or because they are not expected?"

"I didn't mean that." There was a shade of confusion in Stephen's tone.
"Benham is my friend--my best friend almost though he is so much older.
There isn't a man living whom I admire more."

"Yes, I know," replied Corinna; and then--was it in innocence or in
malice?--she asked sweetly: "Have you seen Alice Rokeby this winter?"

For an instant Stephen gazed at her in silence. Was it possible that she
had not heard the gossip about Benham and Mrs. Rokeby? Was she trying to
mislead him by an appearance of flippancy? Or was there some deeper
purpose, some serious attempt to learn the truth beneath her casual
question?

"Only once or twice," he answered at last. "She is looking badly since
her divorce. Freedom has not agreed with her."

Corinna smiled; but the transient illumination veiled rather than
revealed her obscure motives.

"Perhaps, like our Allies, she was making the future safe for further
entanglements," she observed. "I always thought--everybody thought that
she got her divorce in order to marry John Benham."

Frankly perplexed, he gazed wonderingly into her eyes. He knew that she
saw a great deal of Benham; he believed that their friendship had
developed into a deeper emotion on Benham's side at least; and it
seemed to him unlike Corinna, who was, as he told himself, the most
loyal soul on earth, to turn such an association into a cynical jest.

"I heard that too," he replied guardedly, "but of course nobody knows."

There was really nothing else that he could answer. Though he could
discuss Alice Rokeby, one of those vague, sweet women who seem designed
by Nature to develop the sentiment of chivalry in the breast of man, he
felt that it would be disloyal to speak lightly of his hero, John
Benham. "You could never guess where I've been," he said with relief
because he had got rid of the subject. "I might as well tell you in the
beginning that I have just left the Governor."

"Gideon Vetch!" exclaimed Corinna, as she dropped into a chair at his
side. "Why, I thought you were as far apart as the poles!"

"So we were until ten minutes--no, until exactly an hour ago."

"It makes my blood boil when I think of that circus rider in the
Governor's mansion," said the General