When dinner was over, and the Judge had gone to a concert in town, Corinna’s mockery fell from her, and she sat in a long silence watching Benham’s enjoyment of his cigar.  It occurred to her that if he were stripped of everything else, of love, of power, of ambition, he could still find satisfaction in the masculine habit of living—­in the simple pleasures of which nothing except physical infirmity or extreme poverty can ever deprive one.  Moderate in all things, he was capable of taking a serious pleasure in his meals, in his cigar, in a dip in a swimming pool, or a game of cards at the club.  Whatever happened, he would have these things to fall back upon; and they would mean to him, she knew, far more than they could ever, even in direst necessity, mean to a woman.

The long drawing-room, lighted with an amber glow and drenched with the sweetness of honeysuckle, had grown very still.  Outside in the garden the twilight was powdered with silver, and above the tops of the cedars a few stars were shining.  A breeze came in softly, touching her cheek like the wing of a moth and stirring the iris in a bowl by the window.  The flowers in the room were all white and purple, she observed with a tremulous smile, as if the vivid colours had been drained from both her life and her surroundings.  “What a foolish fancy,” she added, with a nervous force that sent a current of energy through her veins.  “My heart isn’t broken, and it will never be until I am dead!”

And then, with that natural aptitude for facing facts, for looking at life steadily and fearlessly, which had been born in a recoil from the sentimental habit of mind, she said quietly, “John, Alice Rokeby came to see me this afternoon.”

He started, and the ashes dropped from his cigar; but there was no embarrassment in the level glance he raised to her eyes.  Surprise there was, and a puzzled interrogation, but of confusion or disquietude she could find no trace.

“Well?” he responded inquiringly, and that was all.

“You used to care for her a great deal—­once?”

He appeared to ponder the question.  “We were great friends,” he answered.

Friends!  The single word seemed to her to express not only his attitude to Alice Rokeby, but his temperamental inability to call things by their right names, to face facts, to follow a straight line of thought.  Here was the epitome of that evasive idealism which preferred shams to realities.

“Are you still friends?”

He shook his head.  “No, we’ve drifted apart in the last year or so.  I used,” he said slowly, “to go there a great deal; but I’ve had so many responsibilities of late that I’ve fallen into the habit of letting other interests go in a measure.”