In her anguish she had wrung a profound truth from experience; and as soon as she had uttered it, she lifted her pale face and stared with that mournful interrogation into the twilight.  Something permanent to live by!  In the mute desperation of her look she appeared to be searching the garden, the world, and the immense darkness of the sky, for an answer.  The afterglow had faded slowly into the blue dusk of night; only a faint thread of gold still lingered beyond the cedars on the western horizon.  Something permanent and indestructible!  Was this what humanity had struggled for—­had lived and fought and died for—­since man first came up out of the primeval jungle?  Where could one find unalterable peace if it were not high above the ebb and flow of desire?  She herself might break away from codes and customs; but she could not break away from the strain of honour, of simple rectitude, which was in her blood and had made her what she was.

“Yes, there ought to be something.  There is something,” she said slowly.  Though her hand still clasped Alice Rokeby’s, she was gazing beyond her across the terrace into the garden.  She thought of many things while she sat there, with that look of clairvoyance, of radiant vision, in her eyes.  Of Alice Rokeby as a little girl in a white dress, with a blue hair ribbon that would never stay tied; of John Benham when she had played ball with him in her childhood; of Kent Page and that young love, so poignant while it lasted, so utterly dead when it was over; of her long, long search for perfection, for something that would not pass away; of the brief pleasures and the vain expectations of life; of the gray deserted road filled with dead leaves and the sound of voices far off—­Nothing but dead leaves and distant voices that went by!  In spite of her beauty, her brilliance, her gallant heart, this was what life had brought to her at the end.  Only loneliness and the courage of those who have given always and never received.

“There is something else,” she said again.  “There is courage.”  Then, as the other woman made no reply, she went on more rapidly:  “I will do what I can.  It is very little.  I cannot change him.  I cannot make him feel again.  But you can trust me.  You are safe with me.”

“I know that,” answered Alice in a voice that sounded muffled and husky.  “I have always known that.”  She rose and readjusted her veil.  “That means a great deal,” she added.  “Oh, I think it means that the world has grown better!”

Corinna stooped and kissed her.  “No, it only means that some of us have learned to live without happiness.”

She went with Alice to the door, and then stood watching her descend the steps and enter the small closed car in the drive.  There was a touching grace in the slight, shrinking figure, as if it embodied in a single image all the women in the world who had lost hope.  “Yet it is the weak, the passive, who get what they want in the end,” thought Corinna, as dispassionately as if she were merely a spectator.  “I suppose it is because they need it more.  They have never learned to do without.  They do not know how to carry a broken heart.”  Then she smiled as she turned back into the house.  “It is very late, and the only certain rules are that one must dine and one must dress for dinner.”