"Benham is my friend--my best friend almost though he is so much older.
There isn't a man living whom I admire more."

"Yes, I know," replied Corinna; and then--was it in innocence or in
malice?--she asked sweetly: "Have you seen Alice Rokeby this winter?"

For an instant Stephen gazed at her in silence. Was it possible that she
had not heard the gossip about Benham and Mrs. Rokeby? Was she trying to
mislead him by an appearance of flippancy? Or was there some deeper
purpose, some serious attempt to learn the truth beneath her casual
question?

"Only once or twice," he answered at last. "She is looking badly since
her divorce. Freedom has not agreed with her."

Corinna smiled; but the transient illumination veiled rather than
revealed her obscure motives.

"Perhaps, like our Allies, she was making the future safe for further
entanglements," she observed. "I always thought--everybody thought that
she got her divorce in order to marry John Benham."

Frankly perplexed, he gazed wonderingly into her eyes. He knew that she
saw a great deal of Benham; he believed that their friendship had
developed into a deeper emotion on Benham's side at least; and it
seemed to him unlike Corinna, who was, as he told himself, the most
loyal soul on earth, to turn such an association into a cynical jest.

"I heard that too," he replied guardedly, "but of course nobody knows."