The strike?  Oh, she had almost forgotten it!  She had almost forgotten the message she had promised to deliver to her father.  With a gesture that appeared to sweep her last remaining illusion behind her, she started resolutely up the drive to the house.  After all, whatever came, she would not let them think that she was either afraid of life or disappointed in love.  She would not mope, and she would not show the white feather.  On one point she was passionately determined—­no man, by any method known to the drama of sex, was going to break her heart!

She had quickened her steps while she made her resolve; and, a minute later, she broke into a run when she saw that Corinna’s car stood at the door and that Corinna waited for her in the hall.  Had the girl only realized it, Corinna’s heart also was troubled; and the visit was one result of the discouraging talk she had had recently with Stephen.

“I had to go down town, so I stopped on the way back to speak to you.”  Though she said no word of her anxiety, Patty could hear it in every note of her expressive voice and feel it in the protective pressure of her arm.  “I want you to go with me to the Harrisons’ dance Wednesday night, and I want you to look your very prettiest.”

“But I’m not even asked.”

“Oh, you are.  Mrs. Harrison has just told me she was sending your invitation with a number that had not gone out.”  How like Corinna it was to put it that way!  “They are giving it for that English girl who is staying with them.  She is pretty, but you must look ever so much prettier.  I want you to wear that green and silver dress that makes you look like a mermaid.”  The kind voice, so full of sympathy, so forgetful of self, flooded Patty’s heart like sunshine after darkness.

“I will go, if you wish me to,” she answered, raising Corinna’s hand to her cheek.  And the thought flashed through her mind, “Stephen will be there.  Even if everything is over, I’d like him to see me.”

“I’ll come for you a little before ten,” said Corinna; and then, as the door of the library opened and Vetch came out, she added hurriedly:  “I must go now.  Remember to look your prettiest.”

“No, don’t go,” begged Patty.  “Father will be so disappointed.”  She had remembered the message, and she felt that Corinna, whose wisdom was infallible, might help her to understand it.  Though it had sounded so casual on the surface, her natural sagacity detected both a warning and a menace; and the very touch of Corinna’s hand, in her long white glove, was reassuring and helpful.

Whatever may have threatened Vetch, he seemed oblivious of it as he came forward with his hearty greeting.  “It’s queer,” he said, “but something told me you were here.  I looked out to make sure.”  His simple pleasure touched Corinna like the artless joy of a child.  It was impossible to resist his magnetism, she thought, as she looked up into his sanguine face, for what was it, after all, except an unaffected enjoyment of little things, an unconquerable belief in life?