“Now, it seems to me that if she has any sense it is one of superiority.  She treated me like a brick under her feet.”

For a minute Corinna was silent.  The smile on her lips had grown tenderly humorous; and there was a softness in her eyes which made him sorry that he had not known her when he was a child.  “Do you know what she told me to-day?” she said.  “She studies a page of the dictionary every morning, and she tries to remember and practise all day the new words that she learns.  She is now in the letter M.”

A peal of merriment interrupted her.  “That explains it!” exclaimed Stephen with unaffected delight, “maneuver—­misinformation—­multitude—­”

“So she has practised on you too?”

“Oh, they all practise on me,” he retorted.  “It is what I was made for.”

“Well, as long as it is only words, you are safe, I suppose.”

He denied this with a gesture.  “It is everything you can possibly practise with—­from puddings to pigeons.”

“My poor dear, so you have been eating Margaret’s puddings.  Weren’t they good ones?”

“Oh, perfection!  But I wasn’t thinking of Margaret.”

“I know you weren’t.  For your mother’s sake I wish that you were.”

His face looked suddenly tired.  “Margaret is perfection, I know; but I feel sometimes that only perfect people can endure perfection.”

“Yes, I know.”  Her smile had faded now.  “I admire Margaret tremendously, but I feel closer to Patty.”

“Perhaps.  I am not sure.  Somehow I have been sure of nothing since I came out of the trenches—­least of all of myself.  I am trying to find out now what I am in reality.”

As he rose to go she held out her hand.  “I think,—­I am not certain, but I think,” she responded gaily, “that Patty’s dictionary may give you the definition.”

CHAPTER VII

CORINNA GOES TO WAR

“Yes, I’ve had a mean life,” thought Corinna, while she stood before her mirror carefully placing a patch on her cheek.  In her narrow gown of black velvet, with the silver heels of her slippers shining beneath the transparent draperies, she had more than ever the look of festival, of October splendour.  If her beauty had lost in roundness and softness, it had gained immeasurably in authority, in that air of having been a part of great events, of historic moments which clung to her like a legend.  Romance and mystery were in her smile; and yet what had life held for her, she mused now, except the frustrated hope, the blighted fruit, the painted lily?  Her beauty had brought her nothing that was not tawdry, nothing that was not a gaudy imitation of happiness.  She had given herself for what?  For the shadow of reality, for the tinted shreds of a damaged illusion.  The past, in spite of her many triumphs, had been worse than tragic; it had been comic—­since it had left her beggared.  Looking back upon it now she saw that it had lacked even the mournful dignity of a broken heart.