It was harder even than she had imagined it would be—­harder because she realized now that they did not speak the same language.  She felt that she had struck against something as dry and cold and impersonal as an abstract principle.  A ludicrous premonition assailed her that in a little while he would begin to talk about his public duty.  This lack of genuine emotion, which had at first appeared to contradict his sentimental point of view, was revealed to her suddenly as its supreme justification.  Because he felt nothing deeply he could afford to play brilliantly with the names of emotions; because he had never suffered his duty would always lie, as Gideon Vetch had once said of him, “in the direction of things he could not hurt.”

“It is a pity,” she said gently, “for she still cares for you.”

The hand that held his cigar trembled.  She had penetrated his reserve at last, and she saw a shadow which was not the shadow of the wind-blown flowers, cross his features.

“Did she tell you that?” he asked as gently as she had spoken.

“There was no need to tell me.  I saw it as soon as I looked at her.”

For a moment he was silent; then he said very quietly, as one whose controlling motive was a hatred of excess, of unnecessary fussiness or frankness:  “I am sorry.”

“Have you stopped caring for her?”

The shadow on his face changed into a look of perplexity.  When he spoke, she realized that he had mistaken her meaning; and for an instant her heart beat wildly with resentment or apprehension.

“I am fond of her.  I shall always be fond of her,” he said.  “Does it make any difference to you, my dear?”

Yes, he had mistaken her meaning.  He was judging her in the dim light of an immemorial tradition; and he had seen in her anxious probing for truth merely a personal jealousy.  Women were like that, he would have said, applying, in accordance with his mental custom, the general law to the particular instance.  After all, where could they meet?  They were as far divided in their outlook on life as if they had inhabited different spiritual hemispheres.  A curiosity seized her to know what was in his mind, to sound the depths of that unfathomable reserve.

“That is over so completely that I thought it would make no difference to you,” he added almost reproachfully, as if she, not he, were to be blamed for dragging a disagreeable subject into the light.

Fear stabbed Corinna’s heart like a knife.  “But she still loves you!” she cried sharply.

He flinched from the sharpness of her tone.  “I am sorry,” he said again; but the words glided, with a perfunctory grace, on the surface of emotion.  Suppose that what he said was true, she told herself; suppose that it was really “over”; suppose that she also recognized only the egoist’s view of duty—­of the paramount duty to one’s own inclinations; suppose—­“Oh, am I so different from him?” she thought, “why cannot I also mistake the urging of desire for the command of conscience—­or at least call it that in my mind?” For a minute she struggled desperately with the temptation; and in that minute it seemed to her that the face of Alice Rokeby, with its look of wistful expectancy, of hungry yearning, drifted past her in the twilight.