From this source, from the inherited instinct for selection, for elimination, from the inbred tendency toward order and suavity of living, Corinna had derived her clear-eyed acceptance of life, her nobility of mind, her loveliness and grace of body.

She had been prepared and nurtured for beauty, only to bloom in an age when beauty had been bartered for usefulness.

Would the delicate discriminations in which she had been trained, the lights and shadows of her soul, become submerged in the modern effort to reduce all distinctions to a level, all diversities to an average?
Turning away from the mirror, Corinna glanced over the charming room, with the wood fire, the white bearskin rug, the ivory bed draped in blue silk, the long windows opening on the garden terrace and the starlit darkness.

There had been luxury always.

Money she had had in abundance; yet there had been no hour in the last twenty years when she would not have exchanged it all--everything that money could bring her--for the dinner of herbs where love was.