“How absurd it was to imagine that I could compare with that!” thought Corinna with amusement.  Her sense of defeat was humorous rather than resentful; yet she realized that it contained a disagreeable sting.  Was her long day over at last?  Had the sun set on her conquests?  Had her adventurous return to power been merely a prelude to the ultimate Waterloo?  Lifting her eyes suddenly from her plate she met the deep meditative gaze of John Benham across the marigolds on the table; and the faint flush that kindled her face made her eyes glow like embers.  Had he read the thought in her mind?  Was the tenderness in his glance only an ironical comment on the ignominious end of her Hundred Days?

She glanced away quickly, and as she did so she looked straight into the eyes of Alice Rokeby—­those eyes that asked perpetually of life, “Why have you passed me by?”

CHAPTER VIII

THE WORLD AND PATTY

On the way home, leaning against her father who had not spoken since the car started, Patty shut her eyes and went over, one by one, the incidents of the dinner.  What had she done that was right?  What had she done that was wrong?  Was her dress just what it ought to have been?  Had she talked to Stephen Culpeper about the things people are supposed to discuss at a dinner?  Had he seen how embarrassed she was beneath her pretence of gaiety?  Would she be better looking if she were to let her hair grow long again?  What had Mrs. Page, who looked as if she had stepped down from one of those old prints, thought of her?

Beneath the hard brightness of her manner there was a passionate groping toward some dimly seen but intensely felt ideal.  She longed to learn if she could only learn without confessing her ignorance.  Her pride was the obstinate, unreasonable pride of a child.

“If I could only find out things without asking!” The image of Stephen rose in her mind, which worked by flashes of insight rather than orderly processes.  She saw his earnest young face, with the sleek dark hair, which swept in a point back from his forehead, his sombre smoke-coloured eyes, and the firm, slightly priggish line of his mouth.  He seemed miles away from her, separated by some imponderable yet impassable barrier.  The first time her gaze had rested on him at the charity ball she had thought impetuously, “Any girl could fall in love with a man like that!” and she had carelessly asked his name of the assiduous Gershom, who appeared to her to exist in innumerable reflections of himself.  The next day when she had seen Stephen approaching her in the Square, she had obeyed the same erratic impulse, half in jest and half from the gambler’s instinct to grasp at reluctant opportunity.  After all, had not experience taught her that one must venture in order to win, that nothing came to those who dared not stake the whole of life on the next turn of fortune?  She had been startled out of her composure by the sight