"Realities!" she exclaimed, "and yet you must
have seen her face as I saw it to-day."
For the third time, in that expressionless tone which covered a nervous
irritation, he repeated gravely, "I am sorry."
"There is nothing more real," she went on presently, "there is nothing
more real than that look in the face of a living thing."
For the first time her words seemed to reach him. He was trying with all
his might, she perceived, he was spiritually fumbling over the effort to
feel and to think what she expected of him. With his natural fairness he
was honestly struggling to see her point of view.
"If it is really like that," he said, "What can I do?"
All her life, it seemed to Corinna, she had been adjusting the
difficulties and smoothing out the destinies of other persons. All her
life she had been arranging some happiness that was not hers. To-night
it was the happiness of Alice Rokeby, an acquaintance merely, a woman to
whom she was profoundly indifferent, which lay in her hands.
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