  Both the 1866 and 1946 outbursts of the recurrent symbiotic nova T CrB have
displayed a mysterious secondary maximum peaking in brightness ~5 months past
the primary one. Common to all previous modeling attempts was the rejection of
plain irradiation of the red giant (RG), on the basis that the secondary
maximum of T CrB would have been out of phase with the transit at superior
conjunction of the RG. Implicit to this line of reasoning is the assumption of
a constant temperature for the white dwarf (WD) irradiating the red giant. I
show by radiative modeling that irradiation of the RG by a cooling WD nicely
reproduces the photometric evolution of the secondary maximum, both in terms of
brightness and color, removes the phasing offset, and provides a
straightforward explanation that will be easy to test at the next and imminent
outburst.
