The streets were almost deserted; and as the car went on, Corinna thought that she had never seen the city look so fresh and charming.  Through the long green vista of the trees, there was a shimmer of silver air, and wrapped in this sparkling veil, she saw the bronze statues and the ardent glow of the sunset.  Everything at which she looked was steeped in a wonderful golden light; and this light seemed to come, not from the burning horizon, but from the happiness that flooded her thoughts.  She saw the world again as she had seen it in her first youth, suffused with joy that was like the vivid freshness of dawn.  The long white road, the arching trees, the glittering dust, the spring flowers blooming in gardens along the roadside, the very faces of the people who passed her; all these things at which she looked were illuminated by this radiance which seemed, in some strange way, to shine not without but within her heart.  “It is too beautiful to last,” she said to herself in a whisper.  “It is youth, more beautiful even than the reality, come back again for an hour—­for one little hour before it goes out for ever.”

Then, because it seemed safer as well as wiser to be practical, to discourage wild dreaming, she tried to direct her thoughts to insignificant details.  Yet even here that rare golden light penetrated to the innermost recesses of her mind; and each drab uninteresting fact glittered with a fresh interest and charm.  “I forgot to order that cretonne for the porch,” she thought disconnectedly, in an endeavour to conciliate the Fates by pretending that life was as commonplace as it had always been.  “That black background with the blue larkspur is pretty—­and I must have the porch furniture repainted the blue-green that they do so well in Italy.  That reminds me that Patty must be the belle of the dance in her green dress.  I shall see that she has no lack of partners—­at least I can manage that;—­if I cannot make her happy.  I am sorry for the child—­if only Stephen—­but, no—­I left the book I was reading in the shop.  What was the name of it?  Silly and sentimental!  Why will people always write things they don’t mean and know are not true about love?  Yes, the black background with the blue larkspur was the best that I saw.  I wonder what I did with the sample.  Oh, why can’t everybody be happy?”

The car turned out of the road into the avenue of elms, which led to the Georgian house of red brick, with its quaint hooded doorway.  In front of the door there was a flagged walk edged with box; and after the car had gone, Corinna followed this walk to the back of the house, where rows of white and purple iris were blooming on the garden terrace.  For a moment she looked on the garden as one who loved it; then turning reluctantly, she ascended the steps, and entered the door which a coloured servant held open.

“A lady’s in there waiting for you,” said the man, who having lost the dialect, still retained the dramatic gestures of his race.  “She would wait, and she says she can’t go without seeing you.”