Corinna admired Benham; she respected him; she liked--was it even possible, she asked herself, that she loved him?
Yet here again she was conscious of that baffled feeling of inadequacy, of something wanting, as if an essential faculty of soul had been either left out by Nature, or refined away by the subtle impersonal processes of his mind.
Clearly there had been an error of judgment in placing him beside Mrs.
Stribling.

His taste was too fastidious to respond to her palpable allurements.

She would have had a better chance with Vetch, for the flippant pleasantry with which Benham responded to the beaming enchantress was clothed in the very tone and look he had used with Patty Vetch in the drawing-room.

Yes, it was futile to stray too far from one's type.

Rose Stribling had failed to interest Benham, mused Corinna, for the same reason that she herself had been unable to arouse the admiration of Gideon Vetch.