“Poor thing!” thought Corinna again.  “That a man should have the power to make anybody suffer like this!” And beneath her sense of fruitless endeavour and wasted romance, there awoke and stirred in her the dominant instinct of her nature, the instinct to bring order out of confusion, to make the crooked straight, to change discord into harmony, that irresistible instinct for things as they ought to be.  She longed to fling up the shades, to let in the sunshine, to drive out the dust and cobwebs, to put fresh flowers in the place of the dead ones.  She longed, as she said to herself with a smile, “to get her hands on the room.”  If she could only change all this hopelessness into happiness!  If she could only restore pleasure here, or at least the semblance of peace!  “It is just as well that all of us can’t feel things this much,” she reflected.

“Mrs. Rokeby ain’t dressed, but she says would you mind coming up?” The maid, having attired herself in a clean apron and a crooked cap, stood in the doorway.  As Corinna followed her, she led the way up the narrow stairs into the bedroom where Alice was waiting.

“I thought you wouldn’t be dressed,” began Corinna cheerfully, “but it’s the only time I have free, and I wanted to see you this morning.”

“It is so good of you,” responded Alice, putting out her hand.  “Everything looks dreadful, I know; but I haven’t been well, and one of the servants has gone to a funeral in the country.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Corinna hesitated an instant, “only I wish you would make some one throw out those dead flowers downstairs.”

“I haven’t been in the room for a week,” replied Alice, dropping back on the couch as if her strength had failed her.  “I don’t seem to care about the house or anything else.”

As soon as her surprise at Corinna’s visit had faded, she sank again into a listless attitude.  Her figure grew relaxed; the faint animation died in her face; and she gazed at her visitor with a look of passive tragedy, which made Corinna, who was never passive, feel that she should like to shake her.  Her soft brown hair, as fine as spun silk, was tucked under a cap of old lace, and beneath the drooping frill her melancholy features reminded Corinna of a Byzantine saint.  Over her nightgown, she had thrown on a Japanese kimono of ashen blue, embroidered in plum blossoms which looked wilted.  Everything about her, Corinna thought, looked wilted, as if each inanimate object that surrounded her had been stricken by the hopelessness of her spirit.  To Corinna’s energetic temperament, there was something positively immoral in this languid resignation.  “Un-happiness like this is contagious,” she thought.  “And all because one man has ceased to love her!  What utter folly!” Aloud she said only, “I came to ask you to go with me to the Harrisons’ dance.”

“To-morrow?  Oh, Corinna, I couldn’t!”

“Do you remember that blue dress—­the one that is the colour of wild hyacinths?”