“I have the right,” she answered desperately, without pride and without shame.  “I had the right before I got my divorce—­”

“I understand,” said Corinna, and her voice was scarcely more than a breath.  Though she did not withdraw the hand that the other had taken, she looked away from her through the French window, into the garden where the twilight was like the bloom on a grape.  The fragrance became suddenly intolerable.  It seemed to her to be the scent not only of spring, but of death also, the ghost of all the sweetness that she had missed.  “I shall never be able to bear the smell of spring again in my life,” she thought.  She had made no movement of surprise or resentment, for there was neither surprise nor resentment in her heart.  There was pain, which was less pain than a great sadness; and there was the thought that she was very lonely; that she must always be lonely.  Many thoughts passed through her mind; but beyond them, stretching far away into the future, she saw her own life like a deserted road filled with dead leaves and the sound of distant voices that went by.  She could never find rest, she knew.  Rest was the one thing that had been denied her—­rest and love.  Her destiny was the destiny of the strong who must give until they have nothing left, until their souls are stripped bare.  “He must have cared for you,” she said at last.  Oh, how empty words were!  How empty and futile!

“He could never care again like that for any one else,” replied Alice, reaching out her hand as if she were pushing away an object she feared.  “Whatever he thinks now, he could never care that much again.”

Whatever he thinks now!  A smile tinged with bitter knowledge flickered on Corinna’s lips for an instant.  After all, how little, how very little she knew of John Benham.  She had seen the face he turned to the world; she had seen the crude outside armour of his public conscience.  A laugh broke from her at the phrase because she remembered that Vetch had first used it.  This other woman had entered into the secret chamber, the hidden places, of John Benham’s life; she had been a part of the light and darkness of his soul.  To Corinna, remembering his reserve, his dignity, his moderation in thought and feeling, there was a shock in the discovery that the perfect balance, the equilibrium of his temperament, had been overthrown.  Certainly in their serene and sentimental association she had stumbled on no hidden fires, no reddening embers of that earlier passion.  Yet she understood that even in her girlhood, even in the April freshness of her beauty, she had never touched the depths of his nature.  It was Alice Rokeby—­frightened, shallow, desperate, deserted, whom he had loved.

“What do you want?” she asked quietly.  “What do you wish me to do?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” replied Alice.  “I don’t know.  I haven’t thought—­but there ought to be something.  There ought to be something more permanent than love for one to live by.”