“Yes, but I couldn’t wear it again, and I haven’t anything else.”

“Well, I like you in that, but wear whatever you please as long as it is becoming.  You must look ethereal, and you must look happy.  Men hate a sad face because it seems to reproach them, and, even if they murder you, they resent your reproaching them.”

There was a deliberate purpose in her levity, for an intuition to which she trusted was warning her that there are times when the only way to treat refractory circumstances is to bully them into submission.  “If you once let life get the better of you, you are lost,” she said to herself.

“You can’t understand,” Alice was murmuring while she wiped her eyes.  “You have always had what you wanted.”

Corinna laughed.  “I am glad you see it that way,” she rejoined, “but you would be nearer the truth if you had said I’d always wanted what I had.”

“It seems to me that you’ve had everything.”

“Very likely.  The lot of another person is one of the mountains to which distance lends enchantment.”

“You mean that you haven’t been happy?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve been happy.  If I hadn’t been, with all I’ve had, I should be ashamed to admit it.”

But Alice was in a mood of mournful condolence.  She had pitied herself so overwhelmingly that some of the sentiment had splashed over on the lives of others.  It was her habit to sit still under affliction, and when one sits still, one has a long time in which to remember and regret.

“Your marriage must have been a disappointment to you,” she said, “but you were so brave, poor dear, that nobody suspected it until you were separated.”

“I am not a poor dear,” retorted Corinna, “and there were a great many things in life for me besides marriage.”

“There wouldn’t have been in my place,” insisted Alice, with a submissive manner but a stubborn mind.

Corinna gazed at her speculatively for a moment; and in her speculation there was the faintest tinge of contempt, the contempt which, in spite of her pity, she felt for all weakness.  “I shouldn’t have got into your place,” she responded presently, “and if I ever found myself there by mistake, I’d make haste to get out of it.”

“But suppose you had been like me, Corinna?” The words were a wail of despair.

A laugh rippled like music from Corinna’s lips.  It was cruel to laugh, she knew, but it was all so preposterous!  It was turning things upside down with vehemence when one tried to live by feeling in a world which was manifestly designed for the service of facts.  “You ought to have gone on the stage, Alice,” she said.  “Painted scenery is the only background that is appropriate to you.”

Alice sighed.  She looked very pretty in her shallow fashion, or Corinna felt that she couldn’t have borne it.  “You are awfully kind, Corinna,” she returned, “but you have so little sentiment.”