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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Visioning, by Susan  Glaspell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Visioning
+
+Author: Susan  Glaspell
+
+Release Date: February 21, 2004 [EBook #11217]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VISIONING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Mary Meehan and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+                             THE VISIONING
+
+                       A NOVEL BY SUSAN GLASPELL
+
+                                 1911
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Miss Katherine Wayneworth Jones was bunkered. Having been bunkered many
+times in the past, and knowing that she would be bunkered upon many
+occasions in the future, Miss Jones was not disposed to take a tragic
+view of the situation. The little white ball was all too secure down
+there in the sand; as she had played her first nine, and at least paid
+her respects to the game, she could now scale the hazard and curl herself
+into a comfortable position. It was a seductively lazy spring day, the
+very day for making arm-chairs of one's hazards. And let it be set down
+in the beginning that Miss Jones was more given to a comfortable place
+than to a tragic view.
+
+Katherine Wayneworth Jones, affectionately known to many friends in many
+lands as Katie Jones, was an "army girl." And that not only for the
+obvious reasons: not because her people had been of the army, even unto
+the second and third generations, not because she had known the joys and
+jealousies of many posts, not even because bachelor officers were
+committed to the habit of proposing to her--those were but the trappings.
+She was an army girl because "Well, when you know her, you don't have to
+be told, and if you don't know her you can't be," a floundering friend
+had once concluded her exposition of why Katie was so "army." For her to
+marry outside the army would be regarded as little short of treason.
+
+To-day she was giving a little undisturbing consideration to that thing
+of her marrying. For it was her twenty-fifth birthday, and twenty-fifth
+birthdays are prone to knock at the door of matrimonial possibilities.
+Just then the knock seemed answered by Captain Prescott. Unblushingly
+Miss Jones considered that doubtless before the summer was over she would
+be engaged to him. And quite likely she would follow up the engagement
+with a wedding. It seemed time for her to be following up some of her
+engagements.
+
+She did not believe that she would at all mind marrying Harry Prescott.
+All his people liked all hers, which would facilitate things at the
+wedding; she would not be rudely plunged into a new set of friends, which
+would be trying at her time of life. Everything about him was quite all
+right: he played a good game of golf, not a maddening one of bridge,
+danced and rode in a sort of joy of living fashion. And she liked the way
+he showed his teeth when he laughed. She always thought when he laughed
+most unreservedly that he was going to show more of them; but he never
+did; it interested her.
+
+And it interested her the way people said: "Prescott? Oh yes--he was in
+Cuba, wasn't he?" and then smiled a little, perhaps shrugged a trifle,
+and added:
+
+"Great fellow--Prescott. Never made a mess of things, anyhow."
+
+To have vague association with the mysterious things of life, and yet not
+to have "made a mess of things"--what more could one ask?
+
+Of course, pounding irritably with her club, the only reason for not
+marrying him was that there were too many reasons for doing so. She could
+not think of a single person who would furnish the stimulus of an
+objection. Stupid to have every one so pleased! But there must always be
+something wrong, so let that be appeased in having everything just right.
+And then there was Cuba for one's adventurous sense.
+
+She looked about her with satisfaction. It frequently happened that the
+place where one was inspired keen sense of the attractions of some other
+place. But this time there was no place she would rather be than just
+where she found herself. For she was a little tired, after a long round
+of visits at gay places, and this quiet, beautiful island out in the
+Mississippi--large, apart, serene--seemed a great lap into which to sink.
+She liked the quarters: big old-fashioned houses in front of which the
+long stretch of green sloped down to the river. There was something
+peculiarly restful in the spaciousness and stability, a place which the
+disagreeable or distressing things of life could not invade. Most of the
+women were away, which was the real godsend, for the dreariness and
+desolation of pleasure would be eliminated. A quiet post was charming
+until it tried to be gay--so mused Miss Katherine Wayneworth Jones.
+
+And of various other things, mused she. Her brother, Captain Wayneworth
+Jones, was divorced from his wife and wedded to something he was hoping
+would in turn be wedded to a rifle; all the scientific cells of the
+family having been used for Wayne's brain, it was hard for Katie to get
+the nature of the attachment, but she trusted the ordnance department
+would in time solemnly legalize the affair--Wayne giving in
+marriage--destruction profiting happily by the union. Meanwhile Wayne was
+so consecrated to the work of making warfare more deadly that he scarcely
+knew his sister had arrived. But on the morrow, or at least the day
+after, would come young Wayneworth, called Worth, save when his Aunt Kate
+called him Wayne the Worthy. Wayne the Worthy was also engaged in
+perfecting a death-dealing instrument, the same being the interrogation
+point. Doubtless he would open fire on Aunt Kate with--Why didn't his
+mother and father live in the same place any more, and--Why did he have
+to live half the time with mama if he'd rather stay all the time with
+father? Poor Worth, he had only spent six years in a world of law and
+order, and had yet to learn about courts and incompatibilities and
+annoying things like that. It did not seem fair that the hardest part of
+the whole thing should fall to poor little Wayne the Worthy. He couldn't
+help it, certainly.
+
+But how Worthie would love those collie pups! They would evolve all sorts
+of games to play with them. Picturing herself romping with the boy and
+dogs, prowling about on the river in Wayne's new launch, lounging under
+those great oak trees reading good lazying books, doing everything
+because she wanted to and nothing because she had to, flirting just
+enough with Captain Prescott to keep a sense of the reality of life, she
+lay there gloating over the happy prospect.
+
+And then in that most irresponsible and unsuspecting of moments
+something whizzed into her consciousness like a bullet--something
+shot by her vision pierced the lazy, hazy, carelessly woven web of
+imagery--bullet-swift, bullet-true, bullet-terrible--striking the center
+clean and strong. The suddenness and completeness with which she sat up
+almost sent her from her place. For from the very instant that her eye
+rested upon the figure of the girl in pink organdie dress and big hat she
+knew something was wrong.
+
+And when, within a few feet of the river the girl stopped running, shrank
+back, covered her face with her hands, then staggered on, she knew that
+that girl was going to the river to kill herself.
+
+There was one frozen instant of powerlessness. Then--what to do? Call to
+her? She would only hurry on. Run after her? She could not get there. It
+was intuition--instinct--took the short cut a benumbed reason could not
+make; rolling headlong down the bunker, twisting her neck and mercilessly
+bumping her elbow, Katherine Wayneworth Jones emitted a shriek to raise
+the very dead themselves. And then three times a quick, wild
+"Help--Help--Help!" and a less audible prayer that no one else was near.
+
+It reached; the girl stopped, turned, saw the rumpled, lifeless-looking
+heap of blue linen, turned back toward the river, then once more to the
+motionless Miss Jones, lying face downward in the sand. And then the girl
+who thought life not worth living, delaying her own preference, with
+rather reluctant feet--feet clad in pink satin slippers--turned back to
+the girl who wanted to live badly enough to call for help.
+
+Through one-half of one eye Katie could see her; she was thinking that
+there was something fine about a girl who wanted to kill herself putting
+it off long enough to turn back and help some one who wanted to live.
+
+Miss Jones raised her head just a trifle, showed her face long enough to
+roll her eyes in a grewsome way she had learned at school, and with a
+"Help me!" buried her face in the sand and lay there quivering.
+
+The girl knelt down. "You sick?" she asked, and Katie had the fancy of
+her voice sounding as though she had not expected to use it any more.
+
+"So ill!" panted Kate, rolling over on her back and holding her heart.
+"Here! My heart!"
+
+The girl looked around uncertainly. It must be a jar, Katie conceded,
+being called back to life, expected to fight for the very thing one was
+running away from. Her rescuer was evidently considering going to the
+river for water--saving water (Katie missed none of those fine
+points)--but instead she pulled the patient to a sitting position,
+supporting her.
+
+"You can breathe better this way, can't you?" she asked solicitously.
+"Have you had them before? Will it go away? Shall I call some one?"
+
+Katie rolled her head about as she had seen people do who were dying on
+the stage. "Often--before. Go away--soon. But don't leave me!" she
+implored, clutching at the girl wildly.
+
+"I will not leave you," the stranger assured her. "I have plenty of
+time."
+
+Miss Jones made what the doctors would call a splendid recovery. Her
+breath began coming more naturally; her spine seemed to regain control of
+her head; her eyes rolled less wildly. "It's going," she panted; "but
+you'll have to help me to the house."
+
+"Why of course," replied the girl who was being delayed. "Do you think
+I'd leave a sick girl sitting out here all alone?"
+
+Kate felt like apologizing. It seemed rather small--that interrupting a
+death to save a life.
+
+"Where do you live?" her companion was asking. She pointed to the
+quarters. "In one of those?"
+
+"The second one," Katie told her. "And thank Heaven," she told herself,
+"the first one is closed!"
+
+"Lean on me," directed the girl in pink, with a touch of the gentle
+authority of strong to weak. "Don't be afraid to lean on me."
+
+Kate felt the quick warm tears against her eyelids. "You're very kind,"
+she said, and the quiver in her voice was real.
+
+They walked slowly on, silently. Katie was trembling now, and in
+earnest. "My name is Katherine Jones," she said at last, looking timidly
+at the girl who was helping her.
+
+It wrought a change. The girl's mouth closed in a hard line. A hard,
+defending glitter seemed to seal her eyes. She did not respond.
+
+"May I ask to whom I am indebted for this kindness?" It was asked with
+gentleness.
+
+But for the moment it brought no response. "My name is Verna Woods," came
+at last with an unsteady defiance.
+
+They had reached the steps of the big, hospitable porch. With deep relief
+Katie saw that there was no one about. Nora had gone out with one of her
+adorers from the barracks.
+
+They turned, and were looking back to the river. It was May at May's
+loveliest: the grass and trees so tender a green, the river so gently
+buoyant, and a softly sympathetic sky over all. A soldier had appeared
+and was picking twigs from the putting green in front of them; another
+soldier was coming down the road with some eggs which he was evidently
+taking to Captain Prescott's quarters. He was whistling. Everything
+seemed to be going very smoothly. And a launch was coming down the river;
+a girl's laugh came musically across the water and the green; it inspired
+the joyful throat of a nearby robin. And into this had been shot--!
+
+Katie turned to the intruder. "It's lovely, isn't it?" she asked in a
+queer, hushed way.
+
+The girl looked at her, and at the fierce rush of things Kate took a
+frightened step backward. But quickly the other had turned away her face.
+Only her clenched hand and slightly moving shoulder told anything.
+
+There was another call to make, and instinct alone could not reach this
+time. For the moment thought of it left her mute.
+
+"You have been so kind to me," she began, her timidity serving well as
+helplessness, "so very kind. I wonder if I may ask one thing more? Am--am
+I keeping you from anything you should be doing?"
+
+There was no response at first, just a little convulsive clenching of the
+hand, an accentuated movement of the shoulder. Then, "I have time
+enough," was the low, curt answer, face still averted.
+
+"I am alone here, as you see. I am just a little afraid of a--a return
+attack. I wonder--would you be willing to come up to my room with
+me--help make a cup of tea for us and--stay with me a little while?"
+
+Again for the minute, no reply. Then the girl turned hotly upon her,
+suspicion, resentment--was it hatred, too?--in her eyes. But what she saw
+was as a child's face--wide eyes, beseeching mouth. Women who wondered
+"what in the world men saw in Katie Jones" might have wondered less had
+they seen her then.
+
+The girl did not seem to know what to say. Suddenly she was trembling
+from head to foot.
+
+Kate laid a hand upon the quivering arm. "I've frightened you," she said
+regretfully and tenderly. "You need the tea, too. You'll come?"
+
+The girl's eyes roved all around like the furtive eyes of a frightened
+animal. But they came back to Katie's steadying gaze. "Why yes--I'll
+come--if you want me to," she said in voice she was clearly making
+supreme effort to steady.
+
+"I do indeed," said Kate simply and led the way into the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+And now that they were face to face across a tea-table Miss Jones was
+bunkered again. How get out of the sand? She did not know. She did not
+even know what club to use.
+
+For never had she drunk tea under similar circumstances. Life had brought
+her varied experiences, but sitting across the teacups from one whom she
+had interrupted on the brink of suicide did not chance to be among them.
+She was wholly without precedent, and it was trying for an army girl to
+be stripped of precedent.
+
+They were sitting at a window which overlooked the river; the river which
+was flowing on so serenely, which was so blue and lazy and lovely that
+May afternoon. She looked to the place where--then back to the girl
+across from her--the girl who but for her--
+
+She shivered.
+
+"Is it coming back?" the girl asked.
+
+"N--o; I think not; but I hope you will not go." Then, desperately
+resolved to break through, she asked boldly: "Am I keeping you from
+anything important?"
+
+A strange gleam, compounded of things she did not understand, shot out at
+her. To be followed with: "Important? Oh I don't know. That depends on
+how you look at it. The only thing I have left to do is to kill myself.
+I guess it won't take long."
+
+Kate met it with a sharp, involuntary cry. For the sullen steadiness,
+dispassionateness, detachment with which it was said made it more real
+than it had been at the water's edge.
+
+"But--but you see it's such a lovely day. You know--you know it's such a
+beautiful place," was what the resourceful Miss Jones found herself
+stammering.
+
+"Yes," agreed her companion, "pleasant weather, isn't it?" She looked at
+Katie contemptuously. "You think _weather_ makes any difference? That's
+like a girl like you!"
+
+Katie laughed. Laughing seemed the only sand club she had just then. "I
+_am_ a fool," she agreed. "I've often thought so myself. But like most
+other fools I mean well, and this just didn't seem to me the sort of day
+when it would occur to one to kill one's self. Now if it were terribly
+hot, the kind of hot that takes your brains away, or so cold you were
+freezing, or even if it were raining, not a decent rain, but that
+insulting drizzle that makes you hate everything--why then, yes, I might
+understand. But to kill one's self in the sunshine!"
+
+As she was finishing she had a strange sensation. She saw that the girl
+was looking at her compassionately. Katherine Wayneworth Jones was not
+accustomed to being viewed with compassion.
+
+"It would be foolish to try to make you understand," said the girl
+simply, finality in her weariness. "It would be foolish to try to make a
+girl like you understand that nothing can be so bad as sunshine."
+
+Katie leaned across the table. This interested her. "Why I suppose that
+might be true. I suppose--"
+
+But the girl was not listening. She was leaning back in the great wicker
+chair. She seemed actually to be relaxing, resting. That seemed strange
+to Kate. How could she be resting in an hour which had just been tacked
+on to her life? And then it came to her that perhaps it was a long time
+since the girl had sat in a chair like that. If she had had a chance,
+when things were going badly, to sit in such a chair and rest, might the
+river have seemed a less desirable place? She had always supposed it was
+_big_ things--queer, abstract, unknowable things like forces and traits
+that made life and death. Did _chairs_ count?
+
+As the girl's eyes closed, surrenderingly, Katie was glad that no matter
+what she might decide to do about things she had had that hour in the
+big, tenderly cushioned wicker chair. It might be a kinder memory to take
+with her from life than anything she had known for a long time.
+
+Katherine had grown very still, still both outwardly and inwardly. People
+spoke of her enviously as having experienced so much; living in all parts
+of the world, knowing people of all nations and kinds. But it seemed all
+of that had been mere splashing around on the beach. She was out in the
+big waves now.
+
+She looked at the girl; looked with the eyes of one who would understand.
+
+And what she saw was that some one, something, had, as it were, struck a
+blow at the center, and the girl, the something that really _was_ her,
+had gone to pieces. Everything was scattered. Even her features scarcely
+seemed to belong to each other, so how must it not be with those other
+things, inner things, oh, things one did not know what to call? Was it
+because she could not get things together it seemed to her she must make
+them all stop? Was that it? Did people lose the power to hold themselves
+in the one that made you _you_?
+
+What could do that? Something that reached the center; not many things
+could; something, perhaps, that kept battering at it for a long time, and
+just shook it at first, and then--
+
+It was too dreadful to think of it that way. She tried to make
+herself stop.
+
+The girl's face was turned to the out-of-doors; to a great tree in
+front of the window, a tree in which some robins had built their nests.
+Such a tired face! So many tear marks, and so much less reachable than
+tear stains.
+
+A beautiful face, too. If all were back which the blow at the center had
+struck away, if she had all of her--if lighted--it would be a rarely
+beautiful face.
+
+The girl was like a flower; a flower, it seemed to Kate, which had not
+been planted in the right place. The gardener had been unwise in his
+selection of a place for this flower; perhaps he had not used the right
+kind of soil, perhaps he had put it in the full heat of the sun when it
+was a flower to have more shade; perhaps too much wind or too much
+rain--Katie wondered just what the mistake had been. For the flower would
+have been so lovely had the gardener not made those mistakes.
+
+Even now, it was lovely: lovely with a saddening loveliness, for one saw
+at a glance how easily a breeze too rough could beat it down. And one
+knew there had been those breezes. Every petal drooped.
+
+A strange desire entered the heart of Katherine: a desire to see whether
+those petals could take their curves again, whether a color which
+blunders had faded could come back to its own. She was like the new
+gardener eager to see whether he can redeem the mistakes of the old. And
+the new gardener's zeal is not all for the flower; some of it is to show
+what he can do, and much of it the true gardener's passion for
+experiment. Katie Jones would have made a good gardener.
+
+And yet it was something less cold than the experimenting instinct
+tightened her throat as she looked at the frail figure of the girl for
+whom life had been too much.
+
+"I must go now," she was saying, with what seemed mighty effort to summon
+all of herself over which she could get command. "You are all right now.
+I must go."
+
+But she sank back in the chair, as if that one thing left at the center
+pulled her back, crying out that if it could but have a little more
+time there--
+
+The girl in blue linen was sitting at the feet of the girl in pink
+organdie. She had hold of her hand, so slim a hand. Everything about the
+girl was slim, built for favoring breezes.
+
+"I have one thing more to ask." It was Kate's voice was not well
+controlled this time.
+
+"You may call it a whim, a notion, foolish notion; call it what you like,
+but I want you to stay here to-night."
+
+The girl was looking down at her, down into the upturned face, all light
+and strength and purpose as one standing apart and disinterested might
+view a spectacle. Slowly, comprehendingly, dispassionately she shook her
+head. "It would be--no use."
+
+"Perhaps," Katie acquiesced. "Some of the very nicest things in life
+are--no use. But I have something planned. May I tell you what it is I
+want to do?"
+
+Still she did not take her eyes from Katie's kindling face, looking at it
+as at something a long way off and foreign.
+
+"I am not a philanthropist, have no fears of that. But I have an idea, a
+theory, that what seem small things are perhaps the only things in life
+to help the big things. For instance, a hot bath. I can't think of any
+sorrow in the world that a hot bath wouldn't help, just a little bit."
+
+"Now we have such a beautiful bathroom. I loathe hot baths in tiny
+bathrooms, where the air gets all steamy and you can't get your breath.
+Perhaps one thing the matter with you is that all the bathrooms you've
+been in lately were too small. Of course, you didn't _know_ that was one
+thing the matter; like once at a dance I thought I was very sad about a
+man's dancing so much with another girl, a new girl--don't you loathe
+'new girls'?--but when I got home I found that one of my dress stays was
+digging into me and when I got my dress off I didn't feel half so broken
+up about the man."
+
+An odd thing happened; one thing struck away came back. There was a light
+in the eyes telling that something human and understanding, something to
+link her to other things human, would like to come back. She looked and
+listened as to something nearer.
+
+Seeing it, Katie chattered on, against time, about nothing; foolish talk,
+heartless talk, it might even seem, to be pouring out to a girl who felt
+there was no place for her in life. But it was nonsense carried by
+tenderness. Nonsense which made for kinship. It reached. Several times
+the girl who thought she must kill herself was not far from a smile and
+at last there was a tear on the long lashes.
+
+"So I'm going to undress you," Katie unfolded her plan, encouraged by the
+tear, "and then let's just see what hot water can do about it. And maybe
+a little rub. I used to rub my mother's spine. She said life always
+seemed worth living after I had done that." She patted the hand she held
+ever so lightly as she said: "How happy I would be if I could make you
+feel that way about it, too. Then I've a dear room to take you into, all
+soft grays and greens, and oh, such a good bed! Why you know you're
+tired! That's what's the matter with you, and you're just too tired to
+know what's the matter."
+
+The girl nodded, tears upon her cheeks, looking like a child that has
+had a cruel time and needs to be comforted.
+
+Katie's voice was lower, different, as she went on: "Then after I've
+brushed your hair and done all those 'comfy' things I'm going to put you
+in a certain, a very special gown I have. It was made by the nuns in a
+convent in Southern France. As they worked upon it they sat in a garden
+on a hillside. They thought serene thoughts, those nuns. You see I know
+them, lived with them. I don't know, one has odd fancies sometimes, and
+it always seemed to me that something of the peace of things there was
+absorbed in that wonderful bit of linen. It seems far away from things
+that hurt and harm. Almost as if it might draw back things that had
+gone. I was going to keep it--" Katie's eyes deepened, there was a
+little catch in her voice. "Well, I was just keeping it. But because you
+are so tired--oh just because you need it so.--I want you to let me give
+it to you."
+
+And with a tender strength holding the sobbing girl Katie unfastened her
+collar and began taking off her dress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+"Kate," demanded Captain Jones, "what's that noise?"
+
+"How should I know?" airily queried Kate.
+
+"I heard a noise in the room above. This chimney carries every sound."
+
+"Nonsense," jeered his sister. "Wayne, you've lived alone so long that
+you're getting spooky."
+
+He turned to the other man. "Prescott, didn't you hear something?"
+
+"Believe I did. It sounded like a cough."
+
+"Well, what of it?" railed Kate. "Isn't poor Nora permitted to cough, if
+she is disposed to cough? She's in there doing the room for me. I'm going
+to try sleeping in there--isn't insomnia a fearful thing? But the
+fussiness of men!"
+
+They were in the library over their coffee. Kate was peculiarly charming
+that night in one of the thin white gowns she wore so much, and which it
+seemed so fitting she should wear. She had been her gayest. Prescott was
+thinking he had never known any one who seemed to sparkle and bubble that
+way; and so easily and naturally, as though it came from an inner fount
+of perpetual action, and could more easily rise than be held down. And he
+was wondering why a girl who had so many of the attributes of a boy
+should be so much more fascinating than any mere girl. "There are two
+kinds of girl," he had heard an older officer once say. "There are girls,
+and then there is Katie Jones." He had condemned that as distinctly
+maudlin at the time, but recalled it to-night with less condemnation.
+
+"Katie," exclaimed Wayne, after his sister had read aloud some one's
+engagement from the Army and Navy Register, and wondered vehemently how
+those two people ever expected to live together, "Nora's out on the side
+porch with Watts!"
+
+"Do you disapprove of this affair between Nora and Watts?" Katie wanted
+to know, critically inspecting the design on her coffee spoon.
+
+"I distinctly disapprove of having some one coughing in the room upstairs
+and not being satisfied who the some one is!"
+
+She leaned forward, pointing her spoon at him earnestly. "Wayne, they say
+there are some excellent nerve specialists in Chicago. I'd advise you to
+take the night train. Take the rifle along, Wayne, and find out just what
+it's done to you."
+
+"That's all very well! But if you'd been reading the papers lately you'd
+know that ideas of house-breaking are not necessarily neurasthenic."
+
+"Dear Wayne, lover of maps and charts, let me take this pencil and make a
+little sketch for you. _A_ is the chamber above. In that chamber is Nora.
+Nora coughs in parting. Then she parts. _B_ is the back hall through
+which Nora walks. _C_ is the back stairs which she treads. Watts being
+waiting, she treads--or is it kinder to say trips?--with good blithe
+speed. _D_ is the side door and _E_ the side porch. Now I ask you, oh
+master of engineering and weird mechanical and mathematical mysteries,
+what is to prevent Nora from getting from _A_ to _E_ in the interval of
+time between the coughing and the viewing?"
+
+Prescott laughed, but Wayne only grunted and ominously eyed the
+chimney place.
+
+"There!" he cried, triumphantly on his feet before his sister, as again
+came the faint but unmistakable little cough. "A little harder to make a
+map this time, isn't it? Talk about nerve specialists--!"
+
+He started for the door, but Katie slipped in in front of him, and
+closed it.
+
+"Don't go, Wayne," she said quietly; queerly, Prescott thought.
+
+"Don't _go?_ Kate, what's the matter with you? Now don't be foolish,
+Katie," he admonished with the maddening patronage of the older brother.
+"Open the door."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't go," she sighed plaintively, arms outstretched
+against the door. "I do hope you won't insist on going. You'll
+frighten Ann."
+
+"Frighten _who?_"
+
+"Ann," she repeated demurely.
+
+"Ann--_who?_ Ann--_what?_"
+
+"Ann _who!_ Ann _what!_ That's a nice way to speak of my friends! It's
+all very well to blow up the world, Wayne, but I think one should retain
+some of the civilities of life!"
+
+"But I don't understand," murmured poor Wayne.
+
+"No, of course not. Do you understand anything except things that nobody
+else wants to understand? Ann is not smokeless powder, so I presume you
+are not interested in her, but it seems to me you might tax your brain
+sufficiently to bear in mind that I told you she was coming!"
+
+"I'm sorry," said Wayne humbly. "I don't seem able to recall a word
+about her."
+
+"I scarcely expected you would," was the withering response.
+
+"Tell me about her," Captain Prescott asked sympathetically. "I like
+girls better than guns. Has Ann another name? Do I know her?"
+
+Katie was bending down inspecting a tear she had discovered at the bottom
+of her dress. "Oh yes, why yes, certainly, Ann has another name. Her name
+is Forrest. No, I think you do not know her. I don't know that Ann knows
+many army people. I knew her in Europe." Then, as they seemed waiting for
+more: "I am very fond of Ann."
+
+She had resumed her seat and the critical examination of her coffee
+spoon. The men were silent, respecting the moment of tender contemplation
+of her fondness for Ann. "Ann is a dear girl," she volunteered at last.
+
+"Having had it impressed upon me that I am such a duffer," Captain Jones
+began, a little haughtily, "I naturally hesitate to make many inquiries,
+but I cannot quite get it through my stupid and impossible head just why
+'Ann' is hidden away in this mysterious manner."
+
+"There's nothing mysterious about it," said Kate sharply. "Ann was
+tired."
+
+"And why, if I may venture still another blundering question, was poor
+Nora held responsible for a cough she never coughed?"
+
+Once more Miss Jones surveyed the torn ruffle at the bottom of her skirt.
+She seemed to be giving it serious consideration.
+
+"I am glad that I do not live in the Mississippi Valley," was the remark
+she finally raised herself to make.
+
+"One of Kate's greatest charms," Wayne informed Prescott, "is the
+emphasis and assurance with which she unfailingly produces the
+irrelevant. Now when you ask her if she likes Benedictine, don't be at
+all surprised to have her dreamily murmur: 'But why should oranges always
+be yellow?'"
+
+"I am glad that I do not live in the Mississippi Valley," Kate went on,
+superiorly ignoring the observation, "because the joy of living seems to
+be at a very low ebb out here."
+
+"Honestly now, do you get that?" he demanded of his friend.
+
+"Ann and I had planned a beautiful surprise for you, Wayne."
+
+"Thanks," said Wayne drily.
+
+"To-night Ann was tired. She did not wish to come down to dinner. Of
+course, I might have told you: 'Ann is here.' To the orderly,
+West-Pointed mind, the well oiled, gun-constructing mind, I presume that
+would present itself as the thing to do. But Ann and I have a sense of
+the joy of living, a delight in the festive, in the--the bubbling wine of
+youth, you know. So we said, 'How beautiful to surprise dear Wayne.' In
+the morning Ann, refreshed by the long night's sleep, was to go out and
+gather roses. Wayne--"
+
+"The roses don't bloom until next month," brutally interrupted Wayne.
+
+"Of course, you would think of that! As we had planned it, Wayne, looking
+from his window was to see the beautiful girl--she is a beautiful
+girl--gathering dew-laden roses in the garden. Perhaps Captain Prescott,
+chancing at that very moment to look from his window, would see her too.
+It was to be a beautiful, a never-to-be-forgotten moment for you both."
+
+"We humbly apologize," laughed Prescott.
+
+"Hum!" grunted dear Wayne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+She stepped out on the porch for a moment as Captain Prescott was saying
+good-night. The moonlight was falling weirdly through the big trees,
+stretching itself over the grass in shapes that seemed to spell unearthly
+things. And there were mystical lights on the water down there, flitting
+about with the movement of the stream as ghosts might flit. Because it
+looked so other-world-like she wondered if it knew what it had just
+missed. She had never thought anything about water save as something to
+look beautiful and have a good time on. It seemed now that perhaps it
+knew a great deal about things of which she knew nothing at all.
+
+"Oh, I say, jolly night, isn't it?" he exclaimed as they stood at the
+head of the steps.
+
+"Yes," said Kate grimly, "pleasant weather, isn't it?" and laughed oddly.
+
+"It's great about your friend coming; Miss--?"
+
+"Forrest." She spoke it decisively.
+
+"She arrived this afternoon?"
+
+"Yes, unexpectedly. I was never more surprised in my life than when I
+looked up and saw Ann standing there." Katie was not too impressed to
+resist toying a little with the situation.
+
+"Oh, is that so? I thought--" But he was too well-bred to press it.
+
+"Of course," she hastened to patch together her thread, "of course, as I
+told Wayne, I knew that Ann was coming. But I didn't really expect her
+until day after to-morrow. You see, there have been complications."
+
+"Oh, I see. Well, at any rate it's great that she's here. She will be
+with you for the summer?"
+
+"Ann's plans are a little uncertain," Kate informed him.
+
+"I hope she'll not find it dull. Does she care for golf?"
+
+"U--m, I--Ann has never played much, I believe. You see she has lived so
+much in Europe--on the Continent--places where they don't play golf! And
+then Ann is not very strong."
+
+"Then this is just the place for her. Great place for loafing, you know.
+I hope she is fond of the water?"
+
+Kate was leaning against one of the pillars, still looking down toward
+the river. It might have been the moonlight made her look so strange as
+she said, with a smile of the same quality as those shadows on the grass:
+"Why yes; in fact, Ann's fondness for the water was the first thing I
+ever noticed about her. I think I might even say it was the water drew us
+together."
+
+"Oh, well then, that is great. We can take the boat and do all sorts of
+jolly things. Now I wonder--about a horse for her. She rides?"
+
+"Perhaps you had better make no plans for Ann," she suddenly advised. "It
+really would not surprise me at all if she went away to-morrow. There is
+a great deal of uncertainty about the whole thing. In fact, Ann has had a
+great deal of trouble."
+
+"I'm sorry," he said with a simplicity she liked in him.
+
+"Yes, a great deal of trouble. Last year both her father and mother died,
+which was a great blow to her."
+
+"Well, rather!"
+
+"And now there are all sorts of business things to straighten out. It's
+really very hard for Ann."
+
+"Perhaps we can help her," he suggested.
+
+"Perhaps we can," agreed Kate. Her eyes left him to wander across the
+shadows down to the river again. But she came back to him to say, and
+this with the oddest smile of all, "Wouldn't it be a queer sensation for
+us? That thing of really 'helping' some one?"
+
+She could not go to sleep that night. For a long time she sat in her room
+in the same big chair in which Ann had sat that afternoon. Poor Ann, who
+had sat there before she knew she was Ann, who was sleeping now without
+knowing she was Ann. For Ann was indeed sleeping. From her door as Kate
+carefully opened it had come the deep breathing as of an exhausted child.
+
+Who was Ann? Where had she come from? How did she get there? What had
+happened? Why had she wanted to kill herself?
+
+She wanted to know. In truth, she was madly curious to know. And
+probably she never would know.
+
+And what would happen now? It suddenly occurred to her that Wayne might
+be rather annoyed at having Ann commit suicide. But there was a little
+catch in her laugh at the thought of Wayne's consternation.
+
+A long time she sat there wondering. Where _had_ Ann come from? She had
+just seemed whirled out of the nowhere into the there, as an unannounced
+comet in well-ordered heavens Ann had come. From what other world?--and
+why? Did she belong to anybody? Another pleasant prospect for poor
+Wayne! Was some one looking for Ann? Would there be things in the paper
+about her?
+
+Surely a girl could not step out of her life and leave no trail behind.
+Things could not close up like that, even about Ann. Every one had a
+place. Then how could one step from that place without leaving a
+conspicuous looking vacancy?
+
+Why had Ann been dressed that way? It seemed a strange costume in which
+to kill one's self. It seemed to Katie that one would prefer to meet the
+unknown in a smaller hat.
+
+She went to the closet and took out the organdie dress and satin
+slippers. From whence? and why thither? They opened long paths of
+wondering. The dress was bedraggled about the bottom, as though trailed
+through fields and over roads. And so strangely crumpled, and so strange
+the scent--a scent hauntingly familiar, yet baffling in its relation to
+gowns. A poorly made gown, Katie noted, but effective. She tried to read
+the story, but could not read beyond the fact that there was a story. The
+pink satin slippers had broken heels and were stained and soaked. They
+had traveled ground never meant for them. Something about Ann made one
+feel she was not the girl to be walking about in satin slippers.
+Something had happened. She had been dressed for one thing and then had
+done another thing. Could it be that ever since the night before she had
+been out of her place in the scheme of things?--loosened from the great
+human unit?--seeking destruction, perhaps, because she could not regain
+her place therein? "Where have you been?" Katie murmured to the ruined
+slippers. "What did it? What do you know? What did you want?"
+
+Many a pair of just such slippers she had danced to the verge of
+shabbiness. To her they were associated with hops, the gayest of music
+and lightest of laughter, brilliant crowds in flower-scented rooms,
+dancing and flirtation--the froth and bubble of life. But something
+sterner than waxed floors had wrought the havoc here. How much of life's
+ground all unknown to her had these poor little slippers trodden? Was it
+often like that?--that the things created for the fun and the joy found
+the paths of tragedy?
+
+She had put them away and was at last going to bed when she idly picked
+up the evening paper. What she saw was that the Daisey-Maisey Opera
+Company was playing at the city across the river. Something made her
+stand there very still. Could it be--? Might it not be--?
+
+She did not know. Would she ever know?
+
+It drew her back to the girl's room. She was sleeping serenely. With
+shaded candle Katie stood at the door watching her. Surely the hour was
+past! Sleep such as that must draw one back to life.
+
+Lying there in the sweet dignity of her braided hair, in that simple
+lovely gown, she might have been Ann indeed.
+
+There was tenderness just then in the heart of Katherine Wayneworth
+Jones. She was glad that this girl who was sleeping as though sleep had
+been a treasure long withheld, was knowing to-night the balm of a good
+bed, glad that she could sink so unquestioningly into the lap of
+protection. Protection!--it was that which one had in a place like this.
+Why was it given the Anns--and not the Vernas? The sleeping girl seemed
+to feel that all was well in the house which sheltered her that night.
+Suddenly Katie knew what it was had gone. Fear. It was terror had slipped
+back, leaving the weariness which can give itself over to sleep. Katie
+was thinking, striking deeper things than were wont to invade Katie's
+meditations. The protection of a Wayne, the chivalrous comradeship of a
+Captain Prescott--how different the life of an Ann from the life this
+girl might have had! She stood at the door for a long moment, looking at
+her with a searching tenderness. What had she been through? What was
+there left for her?
+
+Once, as a child, she had taken a turtle from its native mud and brought
+it home. Soon after that they moved into an apartment and her father
+said that she must give the turtle up. "But, father," she had cried, "you
+don't understand! I took it! Now how can I throw it away?"
+
+"You are right, Katherine," he had replied gravely--her dear, honorable,
+understanding father; "it is rather inconvenient to have a turtle in an
+apartment, but, as you say, responsibilities are greater than
+conveniences."
+
+She was thinking of that story as she finally went to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Nora," said Katie next morning, "Miss Forrest has had a great
+misfortune."
+
+Nora paused in her dusting, all ready with the emotion which Katie's
+tone invited.
+
+"She has lost all of her luggage!"
+
+"The poor young lady!" cried good Nora.
+
+"Yes, it is really terrible, isn't it? Everything lost; through the
+carelessness of the railroads, you know. And such beautiful gowns as they
+were. So--so unusual. Poor Miss Ann was forced to arrive in a dress most
+unsuited to traveling, and is now quite--oh quite--destitute."
+
+Nora held her head with both hands, speechless.
+
+"Didn't you tell me, Nora, that your cousin's wife was very clever at
+sewing--at fixing things over?"
+
+"Yes, yes, Miss Kate--yes'm."
+
+"I wonder, Nora, would she come and help us?"
+
+"She would be that glad, Miss Kate. She--"
+
+"You see, Miss Ann is not very well. She--poor Miss Ann, I hope you will
+be very kind to her. She is an orphan, like you, Nora."
+
+Nora wiped both eyes.
+
+"And just now it would be too dreadful for her to have to see about a lot
+of things. So I think, temporarily, we could arrange some of my things;
+let them down a little, and perhaps take them in--Miss Ann is a little
+taller and a little slimmer than I. Could you send for your cousin's wife
+to help us, Nora?"
+
+Profusely, o'erflowingly, Nora affirmed that this would be possible.
+
+When Captain Jones came in from the shops for luncheon it was to find
+his sister installed in the hall, one of those roomy halls adapted to
+all purposes of living, some white and pink and blue things strewn
+around her, doing something with a scissors. Just what she was doing
+seemed to concern him very little, for he sat down at a table near her,
+pulled out some blue prints, and began studying them. "Thank heaven for
+the saving qualities of firearms," mused Katherine, industriously
+letting out a tuck.
+
+But luncheon seemed to suggest the social side of life, for after they
+were seated he asked: "Oh yes, by the way, where's Miss--"
+
+"Ann is still sleeping," replied Kate easily.
+
+"She must be a good sleeper," ventured Wayne.
+
+"Ann is tired, Wayne," she said with reproving dignity, "and as I have
+already told you several times without seeming to reach through the
+bullets on your brain, not well. She is here for a rest. She may not come
+down for several days."
+
+"Not what one would call a hilarious guest," he commented.
+
+"No, less hilarious than Zelda Fraser." Katie spitefully mentioned a
+former guest whom Wayne had particularly detested.
+
+He laughed. "Well, who is she? What did you say her name was?"
+
+"Oh Wayne," she sighed long-sufferingly, "again--once again--let me tell
+you that her name is Forrest."
+
+"What Forrest?"
+
+"'Um, I don't believe you know Ann's people."
+
+"Not the Major Forrest family?"
+
+"No, not that family; not army people at all."
+
+"Well, what people? I can't seem to place her."
+
+"Ann is of--artistic people. Her father was a great artist. That is, he
+would have been a great artist had he not died when he was very young."
+
+"Rather an assumption, isn't it, that a man would have--"
+
+"Why not at all, if he has done enough during his brief lifetime to
+warrant the assumption."
+
+"Is her mother living?"
+
+"Oh no," said Katie irritably, "certainly not. Her mother has been
+dead--five years." Then, looking into the dreamy distance and drawing it
+out as though she loved it: "Her mother was a great musician."
+
+"I shan't like her," announced Wayne decisively; "she is probably exotic
+and self-conscious and supercilious, and not at all a comfortable person
+to have about. It's bad enough for her father to have been a great
+artist--without her mother needs having been a great musician."
+
+"She is simple and sweet and very shy," reproved Kate. "So shy that she
+will doubtless be painfully embarrassed at meeting you, and seem--well,
+really ill at ease."
+
+"That will be an odd spectacle--a young woman of to-day 'painfully
+embarrassed' at meeting a man. I never saw any of them very ill at ease,
+save when there were no men about."
+
+"Ann's experiences have not all been happy ones, Wayne," said Katie in
+the manner of the deeply understanding to one of lesser comprehension.
+
+"I hope she'll go on sleeping. A young woman of artistic
+people--painfully embarrassed--unhappy experiences--it doesn't sound at
+all comfortable to me."
+
+But a little later he said: "Prescott seems to think that
+Daisey-Maisey company not bad. If you girls would like to go we'll
+telephone for seats."
+
+Katie paused in the eating of a peach. "Thank you, Wayne, but I have
+an idea--just a vague sort of idea--that Ann would not care especially
+for that."
+
+"She's probably right," said Wayne, returning with relief to the
+blue prints.
+
+Katie's sporting blood was up. Ann was to be Ann. Never in her life had
+she been so fascinated with anything as with this creation of an Ann.
+
+"I have prepared a place for her," she mused, over the untucking of
+the softest of rose pink muslins. "I have prepared for her a family
+and a temperament and a sorrow and all that a young woman could most
+desire. From out the nothing a conscious something I have evoked. It
+would be most ungracious--ungrateful--of Ann to refuse to be what I
+made her. I invented her. By all laws of decency, she must be Ann.
+Indeed, she _is_ Ann."
+
+And Katie was truly beginning to think so. Katie's imagination coquetted
+successfully with conviction.
+
+Ann, or more accurately the idea of Ann, fascinated her. Never before
+had she known any one all unencumbered, unbound, by facts. Most people
+were rendered commonplace by the commonplace things one knew about them.
+But Ann was as interesting as one's brain could make her. Anything one
+choose to think--or say--about Ann could just as well as not be true. It
+swept one all unchained out into a virgin land of fancy.
+
+There was but one question. Could Ann keep within hailing distance of
+one's imagination? Did Ann have it in her to live up to the things one
+wished to believe about her? Was she capable of taking unto herself the
+past and temperament with which one would graciously endow her? Katie's
+sense of justice forced from her the admission that it was expecting a
+good deal of Ann. She could see that nothing would be more bootless than
+thrusting traditions upon people who would not know what to do with them.
+But something about Ann encouraged one to believe she could fit into a
+background prepared for her. And if she could--would--! The prospect
+lured--excited. It was as inexplicably intoxicating as a grimace at the
+preacher--a wink at the professor. It seemed to be saucily tweaking the
+ear of that insufferably solemn Things-as-They-Are goddess.
+
+There was in her eyes the light of battle when Nora finally came to tell
+her that Miss Forrest was awake.
+
+But it changed to another light at sight of the girl sitting up in bed so
+bewilderedly, turning upon her eyes which seemed to say--"And what are
+you going to do with me now?"
+
+Fighting down the lump in her throat Katie seized briskly upon that
+look of inquiry. "What she needs now," she decided, "is not tears, but
+a high hand."
+
+"Next thing on the program," she began, buoyantly raising the shades and
+throwing the windows wide, "is air. You're a good patient, for you do as
+you're told. It's been a fine sleep, hasn't it? And now I mean to get you
+into some clothes and take you out for a drive."
+
+The girl shrank down in the pillows, pulling the covers clear to her
+chin, as if to shut herself in. She did not speak, but shook her head.
+
+But Katie rode right over that look of pain and fear in her eyes,
+refusing to emphasize it by recognition.
+
+She left the room and returned after a moment with a white flannel suit
+which she spread out on the bed. "This is not a bad looking suit, is it?
+Your dress is scarcely warm enough for driving, so I want you to wear
+this. I told Nora that your luggage was lost. It may be just as well for
+you to know, from time to time, what I'm telling about you. I have an
+idea this suit will be very becoming to you. It came from Paris. I
+presume I'm rather foolish about things from Paris, but they always seem
+to me to have brought a little life and gayety along. There's a dear
+little white hat and stunning automobile veil goes with this suit. I can
+scarcely wait to see how pretty you're going to look in it all."
+
+For answer the girl turned to the wall, hid her face in the pillows,
+and sobbed.
+
+Kate laid a hand upon her hair--soft, fine brown hair with tempting
+little waves and gleams in it. There came to her a hideous vision of
+how that hair might have looked by this time had she not--by the
+merest chance--
+
+It gave her a feeling of proprietary tenderness for the girl. It seemed
+indeed that this life was in her hands--for was it not her hands had kept
+it a life?
+
+"Please," she murmured gently, persuasively, as the sobs grew wilder.
+
+Suddenly the girl raised her head and turned upon Katie passionately.
+"What do you mean? What is this all about? I know well enough that people
+are not like this! This is not the way the world is!"
+
+"Not like what?" Kate asked quietly.
+
+"Doing things for people they don't have to do things for! Taking people
+into their houses and giving them things--their best things!--treating
+them as if there was some reason for treating them like that! I never
+heard of such a thing. What are you doing it for?"
+
+Katie sat there smiling at her calmly. "Do you want to know the
+honest truth?"
+
+The girl nodded, looking at her with anticipatory defiance, but that
+defiance which could so easily crumble to despair.
+
+"Very well then," she began lightly, "here goes. I don't know
+that it will sound very well, but it has the doubtful virtue of
+being true. The first reason is that it interests me; perhaps I
+should even say--amuses me. I always did like new things--queer
+things--surprises--things different. And the other reason is that
+I've taken a sure enough liking to you."
+
+She had drawn back at the first reason; but the bluntness of the first
+must have conveyed a sense of honesty in the second, for like the child
+who has been told something nice, a smile was faintly suggested beneath
+the tears.
+
+"Would you like to hear my favorite quotation from Scripture?" Kate
+wanted to know.
+
+At thought of Katie's having a favorite quotation the smile grew a little
+more defined.
+
+"My favorite quotation is this: 'Take no thought for the morrow.' Perhaps
+it ends in a way that spoils it; I would never read the rest of it,
+fearing it would ruin itself, but taking just so much and no more--and it
+certainly is your privilege to do that if you wish--if all of a thing is
+good for you, part of it must be somewhat good--it does make the most
+comfortable philosophy of life I know of. It's a great solace to me. Now
+when I am seventy, I don't doubt I will have lost my teeth. Losing one's
+teeth is such a distressing thing that I could sit here and weep bitterly
+for mine were it not for the sustaining power of my favorite quotation.
+Why don't you adopt it for your favorite, too? And, taking no thought for
+the morrow, is there any reason in the world why you shouldn't go out now
+and have a beautiful drive? Going for a drive doesn't commit one to any
+philosophy of life, or line of action, does it? And whatever you do,
+don't ever refuse nice things because you can't see the reason for
+people's doing them. I shudder to think how much--or better, how little
+fun I would have had in life had I first been compelled to satisfy myself
+I was entitled to it. We're entitled to nothing--most of us; that's all
+the more reason for taking all we can get. But come now! Here are some
+fresh things--yours seem a bit dusty."
+
+In such wise she rambled on as a bewildered but unresisting girl
+surrendered herself to her wiles and hands.
+
+When Katie returned from a call to the telephone it was to find Ann
+rubbing her hand over a pretty ankle adorned with the most silky of
+silken hose. "Likes them," Katie made of it, at sight of the down-turned
+face; "always wanted them--maybe never had them. Moral--If you want
+people to believe in you, give them something they don't need, but would
+like to have."
+
+She did her hair for her, chatting all the while about ways of doing
+hair, exclaiming about the beauty of Ann's and planning things she was
+going to do with it. "Were I as proud of all my works as I am of this, I
+might be a more self-respecting person," she said, finally passing Ann
+the hand mirror as if the girl's one concern in life was to see whether
+she approved of the plaiting of those soft glossy braids.
+
+And unmistakably she did approve. "It does look nice this way, doesn't
+it?" she agreed, looking up at Katie with a shy eagerness.
+
+When at last Ann had been made ready, when Katie had slipped on the long
+loosely fitted white coat, had adjusted the big veil with just the right
+touch of sophisticated carelessness, as she surveyed the work of her
+hands her excitement could with difficulty contain itself. "She _is_
+Ann," she gloated. "Her father _was_ a great artist. Her mother simply
+couldn't _be_ anything but a great musician. And she's lived all her life
+in--Italy, I think it is. Oh--I know! She's from Florence. Why she
+couldn't be any place but from Florence--and she doesn't know anything
+about bridge and scandal and pay and promotion--but she knows all
+about dreaming dreams and seeing visions. She's lived a life
+apart--aloof--looking at great pictures and hearing great music. Of
+course, she's a little shy with us--she doesn't understand our roistering
+ways--that's part of her being Ann."
+
+But when she came back after getting her own things, Ann had gone. The
+girl in white was still sitting there in the chair, but she was not at
+all Ann. Things not from Florence, other things than dreams and
+visions and great pictures and music had taken hold of her. Frightened
+and disorganized again, she was huddled in the chair, and as Katie
+stood in the doorway she said not a word, but shook her head, and the
+eyes told all.
+
+Katie bent over the chair. "It's all 'up to me,'" she said quietly.
+"Don't you see that it is? You haven't a thing in the world to do but
+follow my lead. Won't you trust me enough to know that you will not be
+asked to do anything that would be too hard? Believe in me enough to feel
+I will put through anything I begin? Isn't it rather--oh, unthrifty, to
+let pasts and futures spoil presents? Some time soon we may want to talk
+of the future, but just now there's only the present. And not a very
+terrifying present. Nothing more fearful than winding in and out of the
+wooded roads of this beautiful place--listening to birds and--but
+come--" changing briskly to the practical and helping her rise as though
+dismissing the question--"I hear our horse."
+
+"I see Miss Jones has got some of her swell friends visitin' her," a
+soldier who was cutting grass remarked to a comrade newer to the service.
+"Great swell--they tell me Miss Jones is. They say she's it in Washington
+all right--way ahead of some that outranks her. Got outside money--their
+own money. Handy, ain't it?" he laughed. "Though it ain't just the money,
+either. Her mother was--well, somebody big--don't just recollect the
+name. Friendly, Miss Jones is. Not like some, afraid you're going to
+forget your place the minute she has a civil word with you. That one with
+her is some swell from Washington or New York. You can tell that by the
+looks of her, all right. Lord, don't they have it easy though?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+It would indeed seem so. Men looking from the windows of the big
+shops--those great shops where army supplies were manufactured--noticed
+them with much the same thought, some of them admiringly, some
+resentfully, as they chanced to feel about things. They drove past
+building after building, buildings in which hundreds of men toiled on
+preparations for a possible war. The throb of those engines, sight of the
+perspiring faces, might suggest that rather large, a trifle extravagant,
+a bit cumbersome, was the price for peace. But these girls did not seem
+to be thinking of the possible war, or of the men who earned their bread
+thwarting it by preparation. One would suppose them to be just two
+beautifully cared for, careless-of-life girls, thinking of what some man
+had said at the dance the night before, or of the texture of the plume on
+some one's hat, or, to get down to the really serious issues of life,
+whether or not they could afford that love of a dinner gown.
+
+They left the main avenue and were winding in and out of the by-roads,
+roads which had all the care of a great park and all the charm of the
+deep woods. Here and there were soldiers doing nothing more warlike than
+raking grass or repairing roads. It seemed far removed from the stress
+and the struggle, place where the sense of protection but contributed to
+the sense of freedom. There would come occasional glimpses of the river,
+the beautiful homes and great factories of the busy, prosperous,
+middle-western city opposite. To the other side was a town, too, a little
+city of large enterprises; to either side seethed the questions of steel,
+and all those attendant questions of mind and heart whose pressure grew
+ever bigger and whose safety valves seemed tested to their uttermost. To
+either side the savage battles of peace, and there in between--an
+island--the peaceful preparations for war.
+
+And in such places, sheltered, detached, yet offered all she would have
+from without, had always lived Katie Jones, a favorite child of the
+favored men whom precautions against war offered so serene a life;
+surrounded by friends who were likewise removed from the battles of peace
+to the peace of possible war, knowing the social struggle only as it
+touched their own detached questions of pay and rank, pleasant and stupid
+posts, hospitable and inhospitable commandants.
+
+And into this had rushed a victim of the battles of peace! From the stony
+paths of peace there to the well-kept roads of war!
+
+The irony of it struck Katie anew: the incongruity of choosing so
+well-regulated a place for the performance of so disorderly an act as the
+taking of one's life. Choosing army headquarters as the place in which to
+desert from the army of life! Such an infringement of discipline as
+seeking self-destruction in that well-ordered spot where the machinery
+of destruction was so peacefully accumulated!
+
+She looked covertly at Ann; she could do it, for the girl seemed for the
+most part unconscious of her. She was leaning back in the comfortably
+rounded corner of the stanhope, her hands lax in her lap, her eyes often
+closed--a tired child of peace drinking in the peace furnished by the
+military, was Ann. It was plain that Ann was one who could drink things
+in, could draw beauty to her as something which was of her, something,
+too, it seemed, of which she had been long in need. Could it be that in
+the big outside world into which these new wonderings were sent, world
+which they seemed to penetrate but such a little way, there were many who
+did not find their own? Might it not be that some of the most genuine
+Florentines had never been to Florence?
+
+And because all this was _of_ Ann, it was banishing the things it could
+not assimilate. Those hurt looks, fretted looks, that hard look, already
+Kate had come to know them, would come, but always to go as Ann would
+swiftly raise her head to get the song of a bird, or yield her face to
+the caress of a soft spring breeze. Katie was grateful to the benign
+breezes, rich with the messages of opening buds, full, tender, restoring,
+which could blow away hard memories and bitter visions. Yet those same
+breezes had blown yesterday. Why could they not reach then? What was it
+had closed the door and shut in those things that were killing Ann? What
+were those things that had filled up and choked Ann's poor soul?
+
+From a hundred different paths she kept approaching it, could not keep
+away from it. One read of those things in the papers; they had always
+seemed to concern a people apart, to be pitied, but not understood, much
+less reached. Overwhelming that one who had wished to kill one's self
+should be enjoying anything! That a door so tragically shut should open
+to so simple a knock! Mere human voice reach that incomprehensible
+outermost brink! Were they not people different, but just people like
+one's self, who had simply fallen down in the struggle, and only needed
+some one to help them up, give them a cool drink and chance for a
+moment's rest? _Were_ the big and the little things so close? One's own
+kind and the other kind just one kind, after all?
+
+"I love winding roads," Katie was saying, after a long silence. "I
+suppose the thing so alluring about them is that one can never be sure
+just what is around the bend. When I was a little girl I used to pretend
+it was fairies waiting around the next curve, and I have never--"
+
+But she drew in her horse sharply, for the moment at a loss; for it was
+not fairies, but Captain Prescott, riding smilingly toward them, very
+handsome on his fine mount.
+
+"It's--one of our officers," she said sharply. "I--I'll have to
+present him."
+
+"Oh please--_please_!" was the girl's panic-stricken whisper. "Let me get
+out! I must! I can't!"
+
+"You _can_. You must!" commanded Katie. And then she had just time for
+just an imploring little: "For my sake."
+
+He had halted beside them and Katie was saying, with her usual cool
+gaiety: "You care for this day, too, do you? We're fairly steeped in it.
+Ann,"--not with the courage to look squarely at her--"at this moment I
+present your next-door neighbor. And a very good neighbor he is. We use
+his telephone when our telephone is discouraged. We borrow his books and
+bridles; we eat his bread and salt, drink his water and wine--especially
+his wine--we impose on him in every way known to good neighboring. Yes,
+to be sure, this is Miss Forrest of whom I told you last night."
+
+As the Captain was looking at Ann and not seeming overpowered with
+amazement, looking, on the other hand, as though seeing something rarely
+good to look at, Katie had the courage to look too. And at what she saw
+her heart swelled quite as the heart of the mother swells when the child
+speaks his piece unstutteringly. Ann was _doing_ it!--rising to the
+occasion--meeting the situation. Then she had other qualities no less
+valuable than looking Florentine. That thing of _doing_ it was a thing
+that had always commanded the affectionate admiration of Katie Jones.
+
+It was not what Ann did so much as her effective manner of doing nothing.
+One would not say she lacked assurance; one would put it the other
+way--that she seemed shy. It seemed to Katie she looked for all the world
+like a startled bird, and it also seemed that Captain Prescott
+particularly admired startled birds.
+
+He turned and rode a little way beside them, he and Katie assuming
+conversational responsibilities. But Ann's smile warmed her aloofness,
+and her very shyness seemed well adjusted to her fragility. "And just
+fits in with what I told him!" gloated Kate. And though she said so
+little, for some reason, perhaps because she looked so different, one got
+the impression of her having said something unusual. She had a way of
+listening which conveyed the impression she could say things worth
+listening to--if she chose. One took her on faith.
+
+He said to her at the last, with that direct boyish smile it seemed could
+not frighten even a startled bird: "You think you are going to like it
+here?" And Ann replied, slowly, a tremor in her voice, and a child's
+earnestness and sweetness in it too: "I think it the most beautiful place
+I ever saw in all my life."
+
+At the simple enough words his face softened strangely. It was with
+an odd gentleness he said he hoped they could all have some good
+times together.
+
+But, the moment conquered, things which it had called up swept in. The
+whole of it seemed to rush in upon her.
+
+She turned harshly upon Katie. "This is--ridiculous! I'm going away
+to-night!"
+
+"We will talk it over this evening," replied Kate quietly. "You will wait
+for that, won't you? I have something to suggest. And in the end you will
+be at liberty to do exactly as you think best. Certainly there can be no
+question as to that."
+
+On their way home they encountered the throng of men from the
+shops--dirty, greasy, alien. It was not pleasant--meeting the men when
+one was driving. And yet, though certainly distasteful, they interested
+Katie, perhaps just because they were so different. She wondered how they
+lived and what they talked about.
+
+Chancing to look at Ann, she saw that stranger than the men was the look
+with which Ann regarded them. She could not make it out. But one thing
+she did see--the soft spring breezes had much yet to do.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Wayne had gone over to Colonel Leonard's for bridge. Kate was to have
+gone too, but had pleaded fatigue. The plea was not wholly hollow. The
+last thirty hours had not been restful ones.
+
+And now she was to go upstairs and do something which she did not know
+how to do, or why she was doing. Sitting there alone in the library she
+grew serious in the thought that a game was something more than a game
+when played with human beings.
+
+Not that seriousness robbed her of the charm that was her own. The
+distinctive thing about Katie was that there always seemed a certain
+light about her, upon her, coming from her. Usually it was as iridescent
+lights dancing upon the water; but to-night it was more as one light, a
+more steady, deeper light. It made her gray eyes almost black; made her
+clear-cut nose and chin seem more finely chiseled than they actually
+were, and brought out both the strength and the tenderness of her not
+very small mouth. Katie's friends, when pinned down to it, always
+admitted with some little surprise that she was not pretty; they made
+amends for that, however, in saying that she just missed being beautiful.
+"But that's not what you think of when you see her," they would tell you.
+"You think, 'What a good sort! She must be great fun!'" And there were
+some few who would add: "Katie is the kind you would expect to find doing
+splendid service in that last ditch."
+
+Yet even those few were not familiar with the Katie Jones of that moment,
+for it was a new Katie, less new when leaning forward, tense, puzzled,
+hand clenched, brow knitted, her whole well-knit, athletic body at
+attention than when leaning back--lax, open to new and awesome things.
+And as though she must come back where she felt acquainted with herself,
+she suddenly began to whistle. Katie found whistling a convenient and
+pleasant recepticle for excess emotion. She had enjoyed it when a little
+girl because she had been told it was unladylike; kept it up to find out
+if it were really true that it would spoil her mouth, and now liked doing
+it because she could do it so successfully.
+
+She was still whistling herself back to familiar things as she ran
+lightly up the stairs; had warmed to a long final trill as she stood in
+the doorway. The girl looked up in amazement. She had been sitting there,
+elbows on her knees, face in her hands. It was hard to see what might
+have been seen in her face because at that moment the chief thing seen
+was astonishment. Katie slipped down among the pillows of the couch, an
+arm curled about her head. "Didn't know I could do that, did you?" she
+laughed. "Oh yes, I have several accomplishments. Whistling is perhaps
+the chiefest thereof. Then next I think would come golf. My game's not
+bad. Then there are a few wizardy things I do with a chafing dish, and
+lastly, and after all lastly should be firstly, is my genius for getting
+everything and everybody into a most hopeless mess."
+
+The girl moved impatiently at first, as if determined not to be evaded by
+that light mood, but sight of Katie, lying there so much as a child would
+lie, seemed to suggest how truly Katie might have spoken and she was
+betrayed into the shadow of a smile.
+
+"I suppose there has never been a human being as gifted in balling things
+up as I am," meditatively boasted Kate.
+
+"Now here you are," she continued plaintively. "You want to go away.
+Well, of course, that's your affair. Why should you have to stay here--if
+you don't want to? But in the twenty-four hours you've been here I
+presume I've told twenty-four unnecessary lies to my brother. And if you
+do go away--as I admit you have a perfect right to do--it will put me in
+such a compromising position, because of those deathless lies that will
+trail me round through life that--oh, well," she concluded petulantly,
+"I suppose I'll just have to go away too."
+
+But the girl put it resolutely from her. A wave of sternness swept her
+face as she said, with a certain dignity that made Katie draw herself to
+a position more adapted to the contemplation of serious things: "That's
+all very well. Your pretending--trying to pretend--that I would be doing
+you a favor in staying. It is so--so clever. I mean so cleverly kind. But
+I can't help seeing through it, and I'm not going to accept hospitality
+I've no right to--stay here under false pretenses--pretend to be what I'm
+not--why what I couldn't even pretend to be!" she concluded with
+bitterness.
+
+Katie was leaning forward, all keen interest. "But do you know, I think
+you could. I honestly believe we could put it through! And don't you see
+that it would be the most fascinating--altogether jolliest sort of thing
+for us to try? It would be a game--a lark--the very best kind of sport!"
+
+She saw in an instant that she had wounded her. "I'm sorry; I would like
+very much to do something for you after all this. But I am afraid this is
+sport I cannot furnish you. I am not--I'm not feeling just like--a lark."
+
+"Now do you _see_?" Kate demanded with turbulent gesture. "Talk about
+balling things _up_! I like you; I want you to stay; and when I come in
+here and try and induce you to stay what do I do but muddle things so
+that you'll probably walk right out of the house! Why was I born like
+that?" she demanded in righteous resentment.
+
+"'Katherine,' a worldly-wise aunt of mine said to me once, 'you have two
+grave faults. One is telling the truth. The other is telling lies. I have
+never known you to fail in telling the one when it was a time to tell the
+other.' Can't you see what a curse it is to mix times that way?"
+
+As one too tired to resist the tide, not accepting, but going with it for
+the minute because the tide was kindly and the force to withstand it
+small, the girl, her arm upon the table, her head leaning wearily upon
+her hand, sat there looking at Katie, that combination of the
+non-accepting and the unresisting which weariness can breed.
+
+Kate seemed in profound thought. "Of course, you would naturally be
+suspicious of me," she broke in as if merely continuing the thinking
+aloud; Katie's fashion of doing that often made commonplace things seem
+very intimate--a statement to which considerable masculine testimony
+could be affixed. "I don't blame you in the least. I'd be suspicious,
+too, in your place. It's not unnatural that, not knowing me well, you
+should think I had some designs about 'doing good,' or helping you, and
+of course nothing makes self-respecting persons so furious as the thought
+that some one may be trying to do them good. Now if I could only prove to
+you, as could be proved, that I never did any good in my life, then
+perhaps you'd have more belief in me, or less suspicion of me. I wonder
+if you would do this? Could you bring yourself to stay just long enough
+to see that I am not trying to do you good? Fancy how I should feel to
+have you go away looking upon me as an officious philanthropist! Isn't it
+only square to give me a chance to demonstrate the honor of my
+worthlessness?"
+
+Still the girl just drifted, her eyes now revealing a certain
+half-amused, half-affectionate tenderness for the tide which would bear
+her so craftily.
+
+"And speaking of honor, moves me to my usual truth-telling blunder, and I
+can't resist telling you that in one respect I really have designs on
+you. But be at peace--it has nothing to do with your soul. Never having
+so much as discovered my own soul, I should scarcely presume to undertake
+the management of yours, but what I do want to do is to feed you eggs!
+
+"No--now don't take it that way. You're thinking of eggs one orders at a
+hotel, or--or a boarding-house, maybe. But did you ever eat the eggs
+that were triumphantly announced by the darlingest bantam--?"
+
+She paused--beaten back by the things gathering in the girl's face.
+
+"Tell me the truth!" it broke. "What are you doing this for? What have
+you to _gain_ by it?"
+
+"I hadn't thought just what I had to--gain by it," Katie stammered, at a
+loss before so fierce an intensity. "Does--must one always 'gain'
+something?"
+
+"If you knew the world," the girl threw out at her, "you'd know well
+enough one always expects to gain something! But you don't know the
+world--that's plain."
+
+Katie was humbly silent. She had thought she knew the world. She had
+lived in the Philippines and Japan and all over Europe and America. She
+would have said that the difference between her and this other girl was
+in just that thing of her knowing the world--being of it. But there
+seemed nothing to say when Ann told her so emphatically that she did not
+know the world.
+
+The girl seemed on fire. "No, of course not; you don't know the
+world--you don't know life--that's why you don't know what an unheard-of
+thing you're doing! What do you know about _me_?" she thrust at her
+fiercely. "What do you _think_ about me?"
+
+"I think you have had a hard time," Katie murmured, thinking to herself
+that one must have had hard time--
+
+"And what's that to you? Why's that your affair?"
+
+"It's not exactly my affair, to be sure," Katie admitted; "except that we
+seem to have been--thrown together, and, as I said, there's something
+about you that I've--taken a fancy to."
+
+It drew her, but she beat it back. Resistance made her face the more
+stern as she went on: "Do you think I'm going to impose on you--just
+because you know so little? Why with all your cleverness, you're just a
+baby--when it comes to life! Shall I tell you what life is like?" Her
+gaze narrowed and grew hard. "Life is everybody fighting for
+something--and knocking down everybody in their way. Life is people who
+are strong kicking people who are weak out of their road--then going on
+with a laugh--a laugh loud enough to drown the groans. Life is lying and
+scheming to get what you want. Life is not caring--giving up--getting
+hardened--I know it. I _loathe_ it."
+
+Katie sat there quite still. She was frightened.
+
+"And you! Here in a place like this--what do you know about it? Why
+you're nothing but an--outsider!"
+
+An outsider, was she?--and she had thought that Ann--
+
+The girl's passion seemed suddenly to flow into one long, cunning look.
+"What are you doing it for?" she asked quietly with a sort of insolently
+indifferent suspicion.
+
+"I don't know," Katie replied simply. "At least until a minute ago I
+didn't know, and now I wonder if perhaps, without knowing it, I was not
+trying to make up for some of those people--for I fear some of them were
+friends of mine--who have gone ahead by kicking other people out of their
+way. Perhaps their kicks provided my laughs. Perhaps, unconsciously,
+it--bothered me."
+
+Passion had burned to helplessness, the appealing helplessness of the
+weary child. She sat there, hands loosely clasped in her lap, looking at
+Katie with great solemn eyes, tired wistful mouth. And it seemed to Kate
+that she was looking, not at her, but at life, that life which had cast
+her out, looking, not with rage now, but with a hurt reproachfulness in
+which there was a heartbreaking longing.
+
+It drew Katie over to the table. She stretched her hand out across it, as
+if seeking to bridge something, and spoke with an earnest dignity. "You
+say I'm an outsider. Then won't you take me in? I don't want to be an
+outsider. You mustn't think too badly of me for it because you see I have
+just stayed where I was put. But I want to know life. I love it now, and
+yet, easy and pleasant though it is, I can't say that I find it very
+satisfying. I have more than once felt it was cheating me. I'm not
+getting enough--just because I don't know. Loving a thing because you
+don't know it isn't a very high way of loving it, is it? I believe I
+could know it and still love it--love it, indeed, the more truly. No, you
+don't think so; but I want to try." She paused, thinking; then saw it and
+spoke it strongly. "I've never done anything real. I've never done
+anything that counted. That's why I'm an outsider. If making a place for
+you here is going to make one for me there--on the inside, I mean--you're
+not going to refuse to take me in, are you?"
+
+Something seemed to leap up in the girl's eyes, but to crouch back,
+afraid. "What do you know about me?" she whispered.
+
+"Not much. Only that you've met things I never had to meet, met them much
+better, doubtless, than I should have met them. Only that you've fought
+in the real, while I've flitted around here on the playground." Katie's
+eyes contracted to keenness. "And I wonder if there isn't more dignity in
+fighting--yes, and losing--in the real, than just sitting around where
+you get nothing more unpleasant than the faint roar of the guns. To lose
+fighting--or not to fight! Why certainly there can be no question about
+it. What do I know about you?" she came back to it.
+
+"Only that you seemed just shot into my life, strangely disturbing it,
+ruffling it so queerly. It's too ruffled now to settle down without--more
+ruffling. So you're not going away leaving it in any such distressing
+state, are you?" she concluded with a smile which lighted her face with a
+fine seriousness.
+
+She made a last stand. "But you don't know. You don't understand."
+
+"No, I don't know. And don't think I ever need know, as a matter of
+obligation. But should there ever come a time when you feel I would
+understand, understand enough to help, then I should be glad and proud to
+know, for it would make me feel I was no longer an outsider. And let me
+tell you something. In whatever school you learned about life, there's
+one thing they taught you wrong. They've developed you too much in
+suspicion. They didn't give you a big enough course in trust. All the
+people in this world aren't designing and cruel. Why the old globe is
+just covered with beautiful people who are made happy in doing things for
+the people about them."
+
+"I haven't met them," were the words which came from the sob.
+
+"I see you haven't; that's why I want you to. Your education has been
+one-sided. So has mine. Perhaps we can strike a balance. What would you
+think of our trying to do that?"
+
+The wonder of it seemed stealing up upon the girl, growing upon her. "You
+mean," she asked, in slow, hushed voice, "that I should stay
+here--here?--as a friend of yours?"
+
+"Stay here as a friend--and become a friend," came the answer,
+quick and true.
+
+So true that it went straight to the girl's heart. Tears came, different
+tears, tears which were melting something. And yet, once again she
+whispered: "But I don't understand."
+
+"Try to understand. Stay here with me and learn to laugh and be foolish,
+that'll help you understand. And if you're ever in the least oppressed
+with a sense of obligation--horrid thing, isn't it?--just put it down
+with, 'But she likes it. It's fun for her.' For really now, Ann, I hope
+this is not going to hurt you, but I simply can't help getting fun out of
+things. I get fun out of everything. It's my great failing. Not a
+particularly unkind sort of fun, though. I don't believe you'll mind it
+as you get used to it. My friends all seem to accept the fact that
+I--enjoy them. And then my curiosity. Well, like the eggs. It's not
+entirely to make you stronger. It's to see whether the things I've always
+heard about milk and eggs are really so. See how it works--not altogether
+for the good of the works, you see? Oh, I don't know. Motives are
+slippery things, don't you think so? Mine seem particularly athletic.
+They hop from their pigeon holes and turn hand-springs and do all sorts
+of stunts the minute I turn my back. So I never know for sure why I want
+to do a thing. For that matter, I don't know why I named you Ann. I had
+to give you a name--I thought you might prefer my not using yours--so all
+in a flash I had to make one up--and Ann was what came. I love that name.
+It never would have come if something in you hadn't called it. The Ann in
+you has had a hard time." She was speaking uncertainly, timidly, as if on
+ground where words had broken no paths. "Oh, I'm not so much the outsider
+I can't see that. But the Ann in you has never died. That I see, too.
+Maybe it was to save Ann you were going to--give up Verna. And because I
+see Ann--like her--because I called her back, won't you let her stay
+here and--" Katie's voice broke, so to offset that she cocked her head
+and made a wry little face as she concluded, not succeeding in concealing
+the deep tenderness in her eyes, "just try--the eggs?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Katie was writing to her uncle the Bishop. At least that was what she
+would have said she was doing. To be literal, she was nibbling at the end
+of her pen.
+
+Writing to her uncle had never been a solemn affair with Kate. She
+gossiped and jested with him quite as she would with a playfellow; it was
+playfellow, rather than spiritual adviser, he had always been to her,
+Kate's need seeming rather more for playfellows than for spiritual
+advisers. But the trouble that morning was that the things of which she
+was wont to gossip and jest seemed remote and uninteresting things.
+
+Finally she wrote: "My friend Ann Forrest is with us now. I am hoping to
+be able to keep her for some time. Poor dear, she has not been well and
+has had much sorrow--such a story!--and I think the peace of things
+here--peace you know, uncle, being poetic rendition of stupidity--is just
+what Ann needs."
+
+A robin on a lilac bush entered passionate protest against the word
+stupidity. "What will you have? What will you _have_?" trilled the robin
+in joyous frenzy.
+
+Wise robin! After all, what would one have? And when within the world
+of May that robins love one was finding a whole undiscovered country
+to explore?
+
+"No, I don't mean that about stupidity," she wrote after a wide look and
+a deep breath. "It does seem peace. Peace that makes some other things
+seem stupidity. I must be tired, for you will be saying, dear uncle, that
+a yearning for peace has never been one of the most conspicuous of my
+attributes."
+
+There she fell to nibbling again, looking over at the girl in the deep
+garden chair in the choice corner of the big porch. "My friend Ann
+Forrest!" Katie murmured, smiling strangely.
+
+Her friend Ann Forrest was turning the leaves of a book, "Days in
+Florence," which Kate had left carelessly upon the arm of the chair she
+commended to Ann. It was after watching her covertly for sometime that
+Katie set down, a little elf dancing in her eye, yet something of the
+seer in that very eye in which the elf danced:
+
+"Of course you have heard me tell of Ann, the girl to whom I was so
+devoted in Italy. I should think, uncle, that you of the cloth would find
+Ann a most interesting subject. Not that she's of your flock. Her mother
+was a passionate Catholic. Her father a relentless atheist. He wrote a
+famous attack on the church which Ann tells me hastened her mother's
+death. The conflict shows curiously in Ann. When we were together in
+Florence a restlessness would many times come upon her. She would say,
+'You go on home, Katie, without me. I have things to attend to.' I came
+to know what it meant. Once I followed her and saw her go to the church
+and literally fling herself into its arms in a passion of surrender. And
+that night she sat up until daybreak reading her father's books. You see
+what I mean? A wealth of feeling--but always pulled two ways. It has left
+its mark upon her."
+
+She read it over, gloated over it, and destroyed it. "Uncle would be
+coming on the next train," she saw. "He'd hold Ann up for a copy of the
+attack! And why this mad passion of mine for destruction? Should a man
+walking on a tight-rope yield to every playful little desire to chase
+butterflies?"
+
+But as she looked again--Ann was deep in the illustrations of "Days in
+Florence" and could be surveyed with impunity--she wondered if she might
+not have written better than she knew. Her choice of facts doubtless was
+preposterous enough; what had been the conflicting elements--her fancy
+might wander far afield in finding that. But she was sure she saw truly
+in seeing marks of conflict. Life had pulled her now this way, now that,
+as if playing some sort of cruel game with her. And that game had left
+her very tired. Tired as some lovely creature of the woods is tired after
+pursuit, and fearful with that fear of the hunted from which safety
+cannot rescue. It was in Ann's eyes--that looking out from shadowy
+retreat, that pain of pain remembered, that fear which fear has left.
+Katie had seen it once in the eyes of an exhausted fawn, who, fleeing
+from the searchers for the stag, had come full upon the waiting hunt--in
+face of the frantic hounds in leash. The terror in those eyes that
+should have been so soft and gentle, the sick certitude of doom where
+there should have been the glad joy of life struck the death blow to
+Katie's ambitions to become the mighty huntress. She had never joined
+another hunt or wished to hear another story of the hunt, saying she
+flattered herself she could be resourceful enough to gain her pleasures
+in some other way than crazing gentle creatures with terror. Ann made her
+think of that quivering fawn, suggesting, as the fawn had suggested, what
+life might have been in a woods uninvaded. She had a vision of Ann as the
+creature of pure delight she had been fashioned to be, loving life and
+not knowing fear.
+
+From which musings she broke off with a hearty: "Good drive!" and Ann
+looked up inquiringly.
+
+She pointed to the teeing ground some men were just leaving--caddies
+straggling on behind, two girls driving in a runabout along the river
+road calling gaily over to the men. It all seemed sunny and unfettered as
+the morning.
+
+"I'll wager he feels good," she laughed. "I know no more exhilarating
+feeling than that thing of having just made a good drive. It makes life
+seem at your feet. You must play, Ann. I'm going to teach you."
+
+"Do all those people belong here?" Ann asked, still looking at the girls
+who were calling laughingly back and forth to the men.
+
+"On the Island? Oh, no; they belong over there." She nodded to the city
+which rose upon the hills across the river. "But they use these links."
+
+"Don't they--don't they have to--work?" Ann asked timidly.
+
+"Oh, yes," laughed Katie; "I fancy most of them work some. Though what's
+the good working a morning like this? I think they're very wise. But look
+now at the Hope of the Future! He's certainly working."
+
+The Hope of the Future was ascending the steps, heavily burdened. So
+heavily was he burdened that for the moment ascent looked impossible.
+Each arm was filled with a shapeless bundle of white and yellow fur which
+closer inspection revealed as the collie pups.
+
+With each step the hind legs of a wriggling puppy slipped a little
+farther through Worth's arms. When finally he stood before them only a
+big puppy head was visible underneath each shoulder. Approaching Ann,
+then backing around, he let one squirming pair of legs rest on her lap,
+freed his arm, and Ann had the puppy. "You can play with him a little
+while," he remarked graciously.
+
+"Worth," said Katie, "it is unto my friend Miss Forrest, known in the
+intimacies of the household as Miss Ann, that you have just made this
+tender offering."
+
+Worth took firm hold on his remaining puppy and stood there surveying
+Ann. "I came last night," he volunteered, after what seemed satisfactory
+inspection.
+
+Ann just smiled at him, rumpling the puppy's soft woolly coat.
+
+"How long you been here?" he asked cordially.
+
+"Just two days," she told him.
+
+"I'm going to stay all summer," he announced, hoisting his puppy a
+little higher.
+
+"That's nice," said Ann; her puppy was climbing too.
+
+"How long you goin' to stay?" he wanted to know.
+
+"Miss Ann is going to stay just as long as we are real nice to her,
+Worthie," said Katie, looking up from the magazine she was cutting.
+
+"She can play with the puppies every morning, Aunt Kate," he cried in a
+fervent burst of hospitality.
+
+"You got a dog at home?" he asked of Ann.
+
+At the silence, Katie looked up. The puppy was now cuddled upon Ann's
+breast, her two arms about it. As she shook her head her chin brushed the
+soft puppy fur--then buried itself in it. Her eyes deepened.
+
+"It must be just the dreadfulest thing there is not to have a dog,"
+Worth condoled.
+
+There was no response. The puppy's head was on Ann's shoulder. He was
+ambitious to mount to her face.
+
+"Didn't you _never_ have a dog?" Worth asked, drawling it out tragically.
+
+The head nodded yes, but the eyes did not grow any more glad at thought
+of once having had a dog.
+
+Worth took a step nearer and lay an awed hand upon her arm. "Did
+he--_die_?"
+
+She nodded. Her face had grown less sorrowful than hard. It was the look
+of that first day.
+
+Worth shook his head slowly to express deep melancholy. "It's awful--to
+have 'em die. Mine died once. I cried and cried and cried. Then papa got
+me a bigger one."
+
+He waited for confidences which did not come. Ann was holding the
+puppy tight.
+
+"Didn't your papa get you 'nother one?" he asked, as one searching
+for the best.
+
+"Worth dear," called Katie, "let's talk about the live puppies. There
+are so many live puppies in the world. And just see how the puppy loves
+Miss Ann."
+
+"And Miss Ann loves the puppy. Mustn't squeeze him too tight," he
+admonished. "Watts says it's bad for 'em to squeeze 'em. Watts knows just
+everything 'bout puppies. He knows when they have got to eat and when
+they have got to sleep, and when they ought to have a bath. Do you
+suppose, Aunt Kate, we'll ever know as much as Watts?"
+
+"Probably not. Don't hitch your wagon to too far a star, Worthie. No use
+smashing the wagon."
+
+Suddenly Ann had squeezed her puppy very tight. "O--h," cried Worth,
+"_you mustn't_! I like to do it, too, but Watts says it squeezes the
+grows out of 'em. It's hard not to squeeze 'em though, ain't it?" he
+concluded with tolerance.
+
+Again Katie looked up. The girl, holding the puppy close, was looking at
+the little boy. Something long beaten back seemed rushing on; and in her
+eyes was the consciousness of its having been long beaten back.
+
+Something of which did not escape the astute Wayne the Worthy. "Aunt
+Kate," he called excitedly, "Aunt Kate--Miss Ann's eyes go such a long
+way down!"
+
+"Worth, I'm not at all sure that it is the best of form for a grown-up
+young gentleman of six summers to be audibly estimating the fathomless
+depths of a young woman's eyes. Note well the word audibly, Worthie."
+
+"They go farther down than yours, Aunt Kate."
+
+"'Um--yes; another remark better left with the inaudible."
+
+"It looks--it looks as if there was such a lot of cries in them!
+o--h--one's coming now!"
+
+"Worth," she called sharply, "come here. You mustn't talk to Miss Ann
+about cries, dear. When you talk about cries it brings the cries, and
+when you talk about laughs the laughs come, and Miss Ann is so pretty
+when she laughs."
+
+"Miss Ann is pretty all the time," announced gallant Worth. "She has a
+mouth like--a mouth like--She has a mouth like--"
+
+"Yes dear, I understand. When they say 'She has a mouth like--a mouth
+like--' I know just what kind of mouth they mean."
+
+"But how do you know, Aunt Kate? I didn't say what kind, did I?"
+
+"No; but as years and wisdom and guile descend upon you, you will learn
+that sometimes the surest way of making one's self clear is not to say
+what one means."
+
+"But I don't see--"
+
+"No, one doesn't--at six. Wait till you've added twenty thereto."
+
+"Aunt Kate?"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"How old is Miss Ann?"
+
+"Worth, when this twenty I'm talking about has been added on, you will
+know that never, never, _never_ must one speak or think or dream of a
+lady's age."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, because it brings the cries--lots of times."
+
+He had seated himself on the floor. The puppy was in spasms of excitement
+over the discovery of a considerable expanse of bare legs.
+
+"Are they sorry they're not as old as somebody else?" he asked, trying to
+get his legs out of the puppy's lurching reach.
+
+"No, they're usually able to endure the grief brought them by that
+thought."
+
+"Aunt Kate?"
+
+"Oh--_yes_?" It was a good story.
+
+"Would Miss Ann be sorry she's not as old as you?"
+
+"Hateful, ungrateful little wretch!"
+
+"Aunt Kate?"
+
+"I am all attention, Wayneworth," she said, with inflection which should
+not have been wasted on ears too young.
+
+"Do you know, Aunt Kate, sometimes I don't know just what you're
+talking about."
+
+"No? Really? And this from your sex to mine!"
+
+"Do you always say what you mean, Aunt Kate?"
+
+"Very seldom."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Somebody might find out what I thought."
+
+"Don't you want them to know what you think, Aunt Kate?" he pursued,
+making a complete revolution and for the instant evading the
+frisking puppy.
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"But why not, Aunt Kate?"--squirming as the puppy placed a long warm lick
+right below the knee.
+
+"Oh, I don't know." The story was getting better. Then, looking up with
+Kate's queer smile: "It might hurt their feelings."
+
+"Why would it--?"
+
+"Oh, Wayneworth Jones! Why were you born with your brain cells screwed
+into question marks?--and _why_ do I have to go through life getting them
+unscrewed?"
+
+She actually read a paragraph; and as there she had to turn a page she
+looked over at Ann. Ann's puppy had joined Worth's on the floor and
+together they were indulging in bites of puppyish delight at the little
+boy's legs, at each other's tails, at so much of the earth's atmosphere
+as came within range of their newly created jaws craving the exercise of
+their function. Mad with the joy of living were those two collie pups on
+that essentially live and joyous morning.
+
+And Ann, if not mad with the joy of living, seemed sensible of the wonder
+of it. "Days in Florence" open on her lap, hands loose upon it, she was
+looking off at the river. From hard thoughts of other days Kate could
+see her drawn to that day--its softness and sunshine, its breath of the
+river and breath of the trees. Folded in the arms of that day was Ann
+just then. The breeze stirred a little wisp of hair on her temple--gently
+swayed the knot of ribbon at her throat. The spring was wooing Ann; her
+face softened as she listened. Was it something of that same force which
+bounded boisterously up in boy and dogs which was stealing over
+Ann--softening, healing, claiming?
+
+The next paragraph of the story on the printed page was less interesting.
+
+"Aunt Kate," said Worth, gathering both puppies into his arms as they
+were succeeding all too well in demonstrating that they were going to
+grow up and be real dogs, "Watts says it is the ungodliest thing he knows
+of that these puppies haven't got any names."
+
+"I am glad to learn," murmured Kate, "that Watts is a true son of the
+church. He yearns for a christening?"
+
+"He says that being as nobody else has thought up names for them, he
+calls the one that is most yellow, Mike; and the one that is most white,
+Pat. Do you think Mike and Pat are pretty names, Aunt Kate?"
+
+"Well, I can't say that my esthetic sense fairly swoons with delight at
+sound of Mike and Pat," she laughed.
+
+"I'll tell you, Worthie," she suggested, looking up with twinkling eye
+after her young nephew had been experimenting with various intonations of
+Mike--Pat, Pat--Mike, "why don't you call one of them _Pourquoi_?"
+
+He walked right into it with the never-failing "Why?"
+
+"Just so. Call one _Pourquoi_ and the other _N'est-ce-pas_. They do good
+team work in both the spirit and the letter. _Pourquoi_, Worth, is your
+favorite word in French. Need I add that it means 'why'? And
+_N'est-ce-pas_--well, Watts would say _N'est-ce-pas_ meant 'ain't it'?
+and more flexible translators find it to mean anything they are seeking
+to persuade you is true. Pourquoi is the inquirer and N'est-ce-pas the
+universalist. I trust Watts will give this his endorsement."
+
+"I'll ask him," gravely replied Worth, and sought to accustom the puppies
+to their new names with chanting--Poor Qua--Nessa Pa. The chant grew so
+melancholy that the puppies subsided; oppressed, overpowered, perhaps,
+with the sense of being anything as large and terrible as inquirer and
+universalist.
+
+But Worth was too true a son of the army to leave a brooding damsel long
+alone in the corner. "You seen the new cow?" was his friendly approach.
+
+"Why, I don't believe I have," she confessed.
+
+"I s'pose you've seen the chickens?" he asked, a trifle condescendingly.
+
+Ann shamefacedly confessed that she had not as yet seen the chickens.
+
+He took a step backward for the weighty, crushing: "Well, you've seen the
+_horses_, haven't you?"
+
+"Aunt Kate--Aunt Kate!" he called peremptorily, as Ann humbly shook her
+head, "Miss Ann's not seen the cow--or the, chickens--nor the horses!"
+
+"Isn't it scandalous?" agreed Kate. "It shows what sort of hostess I am,
+doesn't it? But you see, Worth, I thought as long as you were coming so
+soon you could do the honors of the stables. I think it's always a little
+more satisfactory to have a man do those things."
+
+"I'll take you now," announced Worth, in manner which brooked neither
+delay nor gratitude.
+
+And so the girl and the little boy and the two puppies, the joy of motion
+freeing them from the sad weight of inquirer and universalist, started
+across the lawn for the stables. Pourquoi caught at Ann's dress and she
+had to be manfully rescued by Worth. And no sooner had the inquirer been
+loosened from one side than the universalist was firmly fastened to the
+other and the rescue must be enacted all over again, amid considerable
+confusion and laughter. Ann's laugh was borne to Katie on a wave of the
+spring--just the laugh of a girl playing with a boy and his dogs.
+
+It was a whole hour later, and as Kate was starting out for golf she saw
+Ann and Worth sitting on the sandpile, a tired inquirer and very weary
+universalist asleep at their feet. Ann was picking sand up in her hands
+and letting it sift through. Worth was digging with masculine vigor. Kate
+passed close enough to hear Ann's, "Well, once upon a time--"
+
+Ann!--opening to a little child the door of that wondrous country of Once
+upon a Time! No mother had ever done it more sweetly, with more tender
+zeal, more loving understanding of the joys and necessities of Once upon
+a Time. Some once upon a time notions of Kate's were quite overturned by
+that "once upon a time" voice of Ann's. Then the once upon a time of the
+sandpile did not shut them out--they who had known another once upon a
+time? Did it perhaps love to take them in, knowing that upon the sands of
+this once upon a time the other could keep no foothold?
+
+"Once upon a Time--Once upon a Time"--it kept singing itself in her ears.
+For her, too, it opened a door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Having conquered the son, Katie that evening set vigorously about for the
+conquest of the father.
+
+"The trouble is," she turned it over in giving a few minutes to her own
+toilet for dinner, after having given many minutes to Ann's, "that
+there's simply no telling about Wayne. He is just the most provokingly
+uncertain man now living."
+
+And yet it was not a formidable looking man she found in the library a
+few minutes before the dinner hour. He was poring over some pictures of
+Panama in one of the weeklies, sufficiently deep in them to permit Katie
+to sit there for the moment pondering methods of attack. But instead of
+outlining her campaign she found herself concluding, what she had
+concluded many times before, that Wayne was very good-looking. "Not
+handsome, like Harry Prescott," she granted, "but Wayne seems the product
+of something--the result of things to be desired. He hasn't a new look."
+
+"Katherine is going to give us more trouble than Wayne ever will," their
+mother had sighed after one of those escapades which made life more
+colorful than restful during Katie's childhood. To which Major Jones
+replied that while Kate might give them more trouble, he thought it
+probable Wayne would give himself the more. Certain it had been from the
+first that if Wayne could help it no one would know what trouble he might
+be giving himself.
+
+Old-fashioned folk who expected brothers and sisters to be alike had, on
+the surface at least, a sorry time with Wayneworth and Katherine Jones.
+Katie was sunny. Katie had a genius for play. She laughed and danced up
+and down the highways and the byways of life and she had such a joyous
+time about it that it had not yet occurred to any one to expect her to
+help pay the fiddler. Just watching Katie dance would seem pay enough
+for any reasonable fiddler. Katie laughed a great deal, and was smiling
+most of the time; she seemed always to have things in her thoughts to
+make smiles. Wayne laughed little and some of his smiles made one
+understand how the cat felt about having its fur rubbed the wrong way.
+Their friend Major Darrett once said: "When I meet Katie I have a fancy
+she has just come from a jolly dip in the ocean; that she lay on the
+sands in the sun and kicked up her heels longer than she had any
+business to, and now she's flying along to keep the most enchanting
+engagement she ever had in all her life. She's smiling to herself to
+think how bad she was to lie in the sand so long, and she's not at all
+concerned, because she knows her friends will be so happy to see her
+that they'll forget to scold her for being late. Katie's spoiled," the
+Major concluded, "but we like her that way."
+
+Of Wayne this same friend remarked: "Wayne's a hard nut to crack."
+
+Many army people felt that way. In fact, Wayne was a nut the army itself
+had not quite cracked. Some army people maintained that Wayne was
+disagreeable. But that may have been because he was not just like all
+other army people. He did not seem to have grasped the idea that being
+"army" set him apart. Sometimes he made the mistake of judging army
+affairs by ordinary standards. That was when they got some idea of how
+the cat felt. And of all cats an army cat would most resent having its
+fur rubbed in any but the prescribed direction.
+
+Katie, continuing her ruminations about Wayne as the product of things,
+had come to see that with it all he was detached from those desirable
+things which had produced him. One knew that Wayne had traditions, yet he
+was not tradition fettered; he suggested ancestors without being ancestor
+conscious. Was it the gun--as Wayne the Worthy persisted in calling
+it--and the gun's predecessors--for Wayne always had something--made him
+so distinctly more than the mere result of things which had formed him?
+"It is the gun," Katie decided, taking him in with half shut eyes as a
+portrait painter might. "Had the same ancestors myself, and yet I'm both
+less and more of them than he is. What I need's a gun! Then I'd stand out
+of the background better, too." Then with one of Katie's queer twists of
+fancy--Ann! Might not Ann be her gun? Perhaps she had been wanting a gun
+for a long time without knowing what it was she was wanting when surely
+wanting something. Perhaps every one felt the gun need to make them less
+the product and more the person.
+
+Then there was another thing. The thing that had traced those lines about
+Wayne's mouth, and had whitened, a little, the brown hair of his temples.
+Wayne had cared for Clara. Heaven only knew how he could--Katie's
+thoughts ran on. Perhaps heaven did understand those things--certainly it
+was too much for mere earth. Why Wayne, about whom there had always
+seemed a certain brooding bigness, certainly a certain rare indifference,
+should have fallen so absurdly in love with the most vain and selfish and
+vapid girl that ever wrecked a post was more than Katie could make out.
+And it had been her painful experience to watch Wayne's disappointment
+develop, watch that happiness which had so mellowed him recede as day by
+day Clara fretted and pouted and showed plainly enough that to her love
+was just a convenient thing which might impel one's husband to get one a
+new set of furs. She remembered so well one evening she had been in
+Clara's room when Wayne came in after having been away since early
+morning. So eager and tender was Wayne's face as he approached Clara, who
+was looking over an advertising circular. There was a light in his eyes
+which it would seem would have made Clara forget all about advertising
+circulars. But before he had said a word, but stood there, loving her
+with that look--and it would have to be admitted Clara did look lovely,
+in one of the _neglige_ affairs she affected so much--she said, with a
+babyish little whine she evidently thought alluring: "I just don't see,
+Wayne, why we can't have a new rug for the reception room. We can
+certainly afford things as well as the Mitchells." And Wayne had just
+stood there, with a smile which closed the gates and said, with an irony
+not lost upon Katie, at least: "Why I fancy we can have a new rug, if
+that is the thing most essential to our happiness." Clara had cried: "Oh
+Wayne--you _dear_!" and twittered and fluttered around, but the
+twittering and fluttering did not bring that light back to Wayne's face.
+He went over to the far side of the room and began reading the paper, and
+that grim little understanding smile--a smile at himself--made Katie
+yearn to go over and wind her arms about his neck--dear strange Wayne who
+had believed there was so much, and found so little, and who was so alive
+to the bitter humor of being drawn to the heart of things only to be
+pushed back to the outer rim. But Katie knew it was not her arms could do
+any good, and so she had left the room, not clear-eyed, Clara still
+twittering about the kind of rug she would have. And day by day she had
+watched Wayne go back to the outer circle, that grim little smile as
+mile-stones in his progress.
+
+But he was folding his paper; it was growing too near the hour to
+speculate longer on Wayne and his past.
+
+"Wayne?" she began.
+
+He looked up, smiling at the beseeching tone. "Yes? What is it, Katie?
+Just what brand of boredom are you planning to inflict?"
+
+"You can be _so_ nice, Wayne--when you want to be."
+
+"'Um--hum. A none too subtle way of calling a man a brute."
+
+"I presume there are times when you can't help being a brute, Wayne; but
+I do hope to-night will not be one of them."
+
+"Why it must be something very horrible indeed, that you must approach
+with all this flaunting of diplomacy."
+
+"It is something a long way from horrible, I assure you," she replied
+with dignity. "Ann will be down for dinner to-night, Wayne."
+
+He leaned back and devoted himself to his cigarette with maddening
+deliberation. Then he smiled. "Through sleeping?"
+
+"Wayne--I'm in earnest. Please don't get yourself into a hateful mood!"
+
+He laughed in real amusement at sight of Katie's puckered face. "I am
+conscious that feminine wiles are being exercised upon me. I
+wonder--why?"
+
+"Because I am so anxious you should like Ann, Wayne, and--be nice to
+her."
+
+"Why?" Again it was that probing, provoking why.
+
+"Because of what she means to me, I suppose."
+
+Something in her voice made him look at her differently. "And what does
+she mean to you, Katie?"
+
+"Ann is different from all the other girls I've known. She
+means--something different."
+
+"Strange I've never heard you speak of her."
+
+"I think you have, and have forgotten. Though possibly not--just because
+of the way I feel about her." She paused, seeking to express how she felt
+about her. Unable to do so, she concluded simply: "I have a very tender
+feeling for Ann."
+
+"I see you have," he replied quietly. He looked at her meditatively, and
+then asked, humorously but gently: "Well Katie, what were you expecting
+me to do? Order her out of the house?"
+
+"But I want you to be more than civil, Wayne; I want you to be
+sympathetic."
+
+"I'll be civil and you can bring Prescott on for the sympathetic," he
+laughed. "You know I haven't great founts of sympathy gushing up in my
+heart for the _jeune fille_."
+
+"Ann's not the _jeune fille_, Wayne. She's something far more interesting
+and worth while than that." She paused, again trying to get it, but could
+do no better than: "I sometimes think of Ann as sitting a little apart,
+listening to beautiful music."
+
+He smiled. "I can only reply to that, Katie, that I trust she is more
+inviting than your pictures of her. A young woman who looked as though
+sitting apart listening to beautiful music should certainly be left
+sitting apart."
+
+"I'll bring her down," laughed Kate, rising; "then you can get your
+own picture."
+
+"I'll be decent, Katie," he called after her in laughing but
+reassuring voice.
+
+The meeting had been accomplished. Dinner had reached the salad, and all
+was well. Yes, and a little more than well.
+
+From the moment she stood in the doorway of Ann's room and the girl
+rose at her suggestion of dinner, Katie's courage had gone up. Ann's
+whole bearing told that she was on her mettle. And what Katie found
+most reassuring was less the results of the effort Ann was making
+than her unmistakable sense of the necessity for making it. There was
+hope in that.
+
+Not that she suggested anything so hopeless as effort. She suggested
+reserve feeling, and she was so beautiful--so rare--that the
+suggestion was of feeling more beautiful and rare than a determination
+to live up to the way she was gowned. Her timidity was of a quality
+which seemed related to things of the spirit rather than to social
+embarrassment. Jubilantly Kate saw that Ann meant to "put it over,"
+and her depth of feeling on the subject suggested a depth which in
+itself dismissed the subject.
+
+She saw at a glance that Wayne related Ann to the things her appearance
+suggested rather than to the suggestions causing that appearance. As
+Katie said, "Ann, I am so glad that at last my brother is to know you,"
+she was thinking that it seemed a friend to whom one might indeed be
+proud to present one's brother. She never lost the picture of the Ann
+whom Wayne advanced to meet. She loved her in that rose pink muslin, the
+skirt cascaded in old-fashioned way, an old-fashioned looking surplice
+about the shoulders, and on her long slim throat a lovely Florentine
+cameo swinging on the thinnest of old silver chains. She might have been
+a cameo herself.
+
+And she never forgot the way Ann said her first words to Wayne. They were
+two most commonplace words, merely the "Thank you" with which she
+responded to his hospitable greeting, but that "Thank you" seemed let out
+of a whole under sea of feeling for which it would try to speak.
+
+Before Wayne could carry out his unmistakable intention of saying
+more, Katie was airily off into a story about the cook, dragging it
+in with a thin hook about the late dinner, and the cook in the
+present case suggested a former cook in Washington whom Katie held,
+and sought to prove, nature had ordained for a great humorist. The
+ever faithful subject of cooks served stanchly until they had reached
+the safety of soup.
+
+Katie was in story-telling mood. She seemed to have an inexhaustible fund
+of them in reserve which she could deftly strap on as life-preserver at
+the first far sign of danger. And she would flash into her stories an "As
+you said, Ann," or "As you would put it, Ann," whenever she found
+anything to fit the Ann she would create.
+
+Several times, however, the rescuing party had to knock down good form
+and trample gentle breeding under foot to reach the spot in time. Wayne
+spoke of a friend in Vienna from whom he had heard that day and turned to
+Ann with an interrogation about the Viennese. Katie, contemplating the
+suppleness of Ann's neck, momentarily asleep at her post, missed the
+"Come over and help us" look, and Ann had begun upon a fatal, "I have
+never been in--" when Katie, with ringing laugh broke in: "Isn't it odd,
+Ann, that you should never have been in Vienna, when you lived all those
+years right there in Florence? I _do_ think it the oddest thing!"
+
+Ann agreed that it _was_ odd--Wayne concurring.
+
+But driven from Vienna, he sought Florence. "And Italy? I presume I go on
+record as the worst sort of bounder in asking if you really care greatly
+about living there?"
+
+Katie thought it time Ann try a stroke for herself. One would never
+develop strength on a life-preserver.
+
+Seeing that she had it to make, she paused before it an instant. Fear
+seemed to be feeling, and a possible sense of the absurdity of her
+situation made for a slightly tremulous dignity as she said: "I do love
+it. Love it so much it is hard to tell just how much--or why." And then
+it was as if she shrank back, having uncovered too much. She looked as
+though she might be dreaming of the Court of the Uffizi, or Santa Maria
+Novella, but Katie surmised that that dreamy look was not failing to find
+out what Wayne was going to do with his lettuce. But one who suggested
+dreams of Tuscany when taking observations on the use of the salad
+fork--was there not hope unbounded for such a one?
+
+Wayne was silent for the moment, as though getting the fact that the love
+of Italy, or perhaps its associations, was to this girl not a thing to
+be compressed within the thin vein of dinner talk. "Well," he laughed
+understanding, "to be sure I don't know it from the inside. I never was
+of it; I merely looked at it. And I thought the plumbing was abominable."
+
+"Wayne," scoffed Kate, "plumbing indeed! Have you no soul?"
+
+"Yes, I have; and bad plumbing is bad for it."
+
+Ann laughed quite blithely at that, and as though finding confidence in
+the sound of her own laugh, she boldly volunteered a stroke. "I don't
+know much about plumbing," Katie heard Ann saying. "I suppose perhaps it
+is bad. But do you care much about plumbing when looking at"--her pause
+before it might have been one of reverence--"The Madonna of the Chair?"
+
+Katie treated herself to a particularly tender bit of lettuce and
+secretly hugged herself, Ann, and "Days in Florence." The Madonna of the
+Chair furnished the frontispiece for that valuable work.
+
+Ann had receded, flushed, her lip trembling a little; Wayne was looking
+at her thoughtfully--and a little as one might look at the Madonna of the
+Chair. Katie heard the trump of duty call her to another story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Feeling that first efforts, even on life-preservers, should not be long
+ones, it was soon after they returned to the library that Katie threw
+out: "Well, Ann, if that letter must be written--"
+
+Ann rose. "Yes, and it must."
+
+"But morning is the time for letter writing," urged Wayne.
+
+"Morning in this instance is the time for shopping," said Kate.
+
+She had left Ann at the foot of the stairs, murmuring something about
+having to see Nora. It was a half hour later that she looked in upon her.
+
+What she saw was too much for Katie. Had the whole of creation been
+wrecked by her laughing, Katie must needs have laughed just then.
+
+For Ann's two hands gripped "Days in Florence" with fierce resolution.
+Ann's head was bent over the book in a sort of stern frenzy. Ann, not
+even having waited to disrobe, was attacking Florence as the good old
+city had never been attacked before.
+
+She seemed to get the significance of Katie's laugh, however, for it was
+as to a confederate she whispered: "I'll get caught!"
+
+"Trust me," said Kate, and laughed from a new angle.
+
+Ann could laugh, too, and when Katie sat down to "talk it over" they
+were that most intimate of all things in the world, two girls with a
+secret, two girls set apart from all the world by that secret they held
+from all the world, hugging between them a beautiful, brilliant secret
+and laughing at the rest of the world because it couldn't get in. That
+secret, shared and recognized and laughed over and loved, did what no
+amount of sympathy or gratitude could have done. It was as if the whole
+situation heaved a sigh of relief and settled itself in more
+comfortable position.
+
+"Why no," sparkled Kate, in response to Ann's protestation, "the only
+thing you have to do is not to try. Lovers of Italy must take their Italy
+with a superior calm. And when you don't know what to say--just seem too
+full for utterance. That being too full for utterance throws such a safe
+and lovely cover over the lack of utterance. And if you fear you're mixed
+up just look as though you were going to cry. Wayne will be so terrified
+at that prospect that he'll turn the conversation to air-ships, and
+you'll always be safe with Wayne in an air-ship because he'll do all the
+talking himself."
+
+Ann grew thoughtful. She seemed to have turned back to something. Katie
+would have given much to know what it was Ann's deep brown eyes were
+surveying so somberly.
+
+"The strange part of it is," she said, "I used to dream of some
+such place."
+
+"Of course you did. That's why you belong there. A great deal more than
+some of us who've tramped miles through galleries." Then swiftly Katie
+changed her position, her expression and the conversation. "Elizabeth
+Barrett Browning is your favorite poet, isn't she, Ann?"
+
+"Why--why no," stammered Ann. "I'm afraid I haven't any favorite.
+You see--"
+
+"So much the better. Then you can take Elizabeth without being untrue to
+any one else. She loved Florence. You know she's buried there. I think
+you used to make pilgrimages to her tomb."
+
+Again Ann turned back, and at what she saw smiled a little, half
+bitterly, half wistfully. "I'd like to have made pilgrimages somewhere."
+
+"To be sure you would. That's why you did. The things we would like to
+have done, and would have done if we could, are lots more part of us than
+just the things we did do because we had to do them. Just consider that
+all those things you'd like to have done are things you did. It will make
+you feel at home with yourself. And to-morrow we'll go over the river and
+order Elizabeth Barrett Browning and a tailored suit."
+
+But with that the girl who would like to have done things receded,
+leaving baldly exposed the girl who had done the things she had had to
+do. "No," said Ann stubbornly and sullenly.
+
+"But blue gingham morning dress and rose-colored evening dress are
+scarcely sufficient unto one's needs," murmured Kate.
+
+Ann turned away her head. "I can't take things--not things like that."
+
+"But why not?" pursued Kate. "Why can't you take as well as I can take?"
+
+She turned upon her hotly, as if resentful of being toyed with. "How
+silly! It is yours."
+
+Katie had said it at random, but once expressed it interested her.
+"Why I don't know whether it is or not," she said, suddenly more
+interested in the idea itself than in its effect upon Ann. "Why is it?
+I didn't earn it."
+
+"There's no use talking _that_ way. It's yours because you've got it."
+That not seeming to bring ethical satisfaction she added: "It's yours
+because your family earned it."
+
+Katie was unfastening the muslin gown. "But as a matter of
+fact,"--getting more and more interested--"they didn't. They didn't earn
+it. They just got it. What they earned they had to use to live on. This
+that is left over is just something my grandfather fell upon through
+luck. Then why should it be mine now--any more than yours?"
+
+Ann deemed her intelligence insulted. "That's ridiculous."
+
+"Well now I don't know whether it is or not." She was silent for a
+moment, considering it. "But anyhow," she came back to the issue, "we
+have our hands on this money, so we'll get the suit. You're in the army
+now, Ann. You're enlisted under me, and I'll have no insubordination. You
+know--into the jaws of death!--Even so into the jaws of Elizabeth Barrett
+Browning--and a tailor-made suit!"
+
+So Katie laughed herself out of the room.
+
+And softly she whistled herself back into the library. The whistling did
+not seem to break through the smoke which surrounded Wayne. After several
+moments of ostentatious indifference, she threw out at him, with a
+conspicuous yawn: "Well, Wayne, what did you think of the terrifying
+jeune fille?"
+
+Wayne's reply was long in coming, simple, quiet, and queer: "She's a
+lady."
+
+Startled, peculiarly gratified, impishly delighted, she yet replied
+lightly: "A lady, is she? Um. Once at school one of the girls said she
+had a 'trade-last' for me, and after I had searched the closets of memory
+and dragged out that some one had said she had pretty eyes, dressed it up
+until this some one had called her ravishingly beautiful--after all that
+conscientious dishonesty what does she tell me but that some one had said
+I was so 'clean-looking.' One rather takes 'clean-looking' for granted!
+Even so with our friends being ladies. Quaint old word for you to
+resurrect, Wayne."
+
+"Yes," he laughed, "quite quaint. But she seems to me just that
+old-fashioned thing our forefathers called a lady. Now we have good
+fellows, and thoroughbreds, and belongers. Not many of this girl's type."
+
+Katie wanted to chuckle. But suddenly the unborn chuckle dissolved into a
+sea of awe.
+
+Thoughts and smoke seemed circling around Wayne together; and perhaps the
+blue rim of it all was dreams. His face was not what one would expect the
+face of a man engaged in making warfare more deadly to be as he
+murmured, not to Katie but to the thin outer rim, softly, as to rims
+barely material: "And more than that--a woman."
+
+He puzzled her. "Well, Wayne," she laughed, "aren't you getting a
+little--cryptic? I certainly told you--by implication--that she was both
+a lady and a woman. Then why this air of discovery?"
+
+But it did not get Katie into the smoke. He made no effort to get her in,
+but after a moment came back to her with a kindly: "I am glad you have
+such a friend, Katie. It will do you good."
+
+That inward chuckle showed no disposition to dissolve into anything; it
+fought hard to be just a live, healthy chuckle.
+
+Moved by an impulse half serious, half mischievous she asked: "You would
+say then, Wayne, that Ann seems to you more of a lady than Zelda Fraser?"
+
+Wayne's real answer lay in his look of disgust. He did condescend to put
+into words: "Oh, don't be absurd, Katie."
+
+"But Zelda has a splendid ancestry," she pressed.
+
+"And suggests a chorus girl."
+
+That stilled her. It left her things to think about.
+
+At last she asked: "And Wayne, which would you say I was?"
+
+He came back from a considerable distance. "Which of what?"
+
+"Lady or chorus girl?"
+
+He looked at her and smiled. Katie was all aglow with the daring of her
+adventure. "I should say, Katie dear, that you were a half-breed."
+
+"What a sounding thing to be! But Major Darrett in his last letter tells
+me I am his idea of a thoroughbred. How can I be a half-breed if I'm a
+thoroughbred?"
+
+"True, it makes you a biological freak. But you should be too original to
+complain of that."
+
+"But I do complain. It sounds like something with three legs. Not but
+what I'd rather be a biological freak than a grind--or a prude."
+
+"Be at peace," drily advised Wayne.
+
+"Ann was quiet to-night," mused Katie, feeling an irresistible desire
+to get back to her post of duty, not because there was any need for her
+being there, but merely because she liked the post. "She felt a little
+strange, I think. She has been much alone and with people of a
+different sort."
+
+"And I presume it never occurred to you, Katie, that neither Ann nor I
+was fairly surfeited with opportunities for conversational initiative?
+Just drop me a hint sometime when you are not going to be at home, will
+you? I should like a chance to get acquainted with your friend."
+
+Katie was straightway the hen with feathers ruffled over her brood. "You
+must be careful, Wayne," she clucked at him. "When you are alone with Ann
+please try to avoid all unpleasant subjects, or anything you see she
+would rather not talk about."
+
+"Thanks awfully for the hint," returned Wayne quietly. "I had been
+meaning to speak first of her father's funeral. I thought I would follow
+that with a searching inquiry into her mother's last illness. But of
+course if you think this not wise I am glad to be guided by your
+judgment, Katie."
+
+"Wayne!" she reproached laughingly. "Now you know well enough! I simply
+meant if you saw Ann wished to avoid a subject, not to pursue it."
+
+"Thanks again, dear Sister Kate, for these easy lessons in
+behavior. Rule 1--"
+
+But she waved it laughingly aside, rising to leave him. "Just the same,"
+she maintained, from the doorway, "experience may make the familiar
+things--and dear things--the very things of which one wishes least to
+speak. Talk to Ann about the army, Wayne; talk about--"
+
+But as he was holding out note-book and pencil she beat grimacing
+retreat.
+
+That night Miss Jones dreamed. The world had been all shaken up and
+everything was confused and no one could put it to rights. All those
+dames whose ancestors had sailed unknown waters were in the front row of
+the chorus, and all the chorus girls were dancing a stately minuet at Old
+Point Comfort. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was trying to commit suicide by
+becoming a biological freak, and the Madonna of the Chair was wearing a
+smartly tailored brown rajah suit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Peacefully and pleasantly one day slipped after another. Some thirty of
+them had joined their unnumbered fellows and to-morrow bade fair to pass
+serenely as yesterday. "This, dear Queen," Katie confided to the dog
+stretched at her feet, "is what in vulgar parlance is known as 'nothing
+doing,' and in poetic language is termed the 'simple life.'"
+
+Thirty days of "nothing doing"--and yet there had been more "doing" in
+those days than in all the thousands of their predecessors gaily crowded
+to the brim. Those crowded days seemed days of a long sleep; these quiet
+ones, days of waking.
+
+Ann was out on the links that afternoon with Captain Prescott. From
+her place on the porch Katie had a glimpse of them at that moment.
+Ann's white dress with its big knot of red ribbon was a vivid and a
+pleasing spot. The olive of the Captain's uniform seemed part of the
+background of turf and trees--all of it for Ann, so live and so pretty
+in white and red.
+
+He was seeking to correct her stroke. Both were much in earnest about it.
+It would seem that the whole of Ann's life hung upon that thing of better
+form in her golf. Finally she made a fair drive and turned to him
+jubilantly. He was commending enthusiastically and Ann quite pranced
+under his enthusiasm. Seeing Katie, she waved her hand and pointed off to
+her ball that Katie, too, might mark the triumph. Then they came along,
+laughing and chatting. When the ball was reached they were in about the
+spot where Katie had first seen Ann, thirty days before.
+
+She knew how Ann felt. There was joy in the good stroke. In this other
+game she had been playing in the last thirty days--this more difficult
+and more alluring game--she had come to know anew the exhilaration of
+bunker cleared, the satisfaction of the long drive and the sure putt.
+
+And Katie had played a good game. It was not strange she should have
+convinced others, for there were times when her game was so good as to
+convince even herself. Though it had ever been so with Kate. The things
+in the world of "Let's play like" had always been persuasive things.
+Curious she was to know how often or how completely Ann was able to
+forget they were playing a game.
+
+She had come to think of Ann, not as a hard-and-fast, all-finished
+product, but as something fluid, certainly plastic. It was as if anything
+could be poured into Ann, making her. A dream could be woven round her,
+and Ann could grow into that dream. That was a new fancy to Kate; she had
+always thought of people more as made than as constantly in the making.
+It opened up long paths of wondering. To all sides those paths were
+opening in those days--it was that that made them such eventful days.
+Down this path strayed the fancy how much people were made by the things
+which surrounded them--the things expected of them. That path led to the
+vista that amazing responsibility might lie with the things
+surrounding--the things expected. It even made her wonder in what measure
+she would have been Katie Jones, differently surrounded, differently
+called upon. Her little trip down that path jostled both her approval of
+herself and her disapproval of others.
+
+It was only once or twice that the real girl had stirred in the dream.
+For the most part she had remained in the shadow of Katie's fancyings.
+She was as an actor on the stage, inarticulate save as regards her part.
+Katie had grown so absorbed in that part that there were times of
+forgetting there was a real girl behind it. Often she believed in her
+friend Ann Forrest, the dear girl she had known in Florence, the poor
+child who had gone through so many hard things and was so different from
+the Zelda Frasers of the world. She rejoiced with Wayne and Captain
+Prescott in seeing dear Ann grow a little more plump, a little rosier, a
+little more smiling. She could understand perfectly, as she had made them
+understand, why Ann did not talk more of Italy and the things of her own
+life. Life had crowded in too hard upon her, that setting of the other
+days made other days live again too acutely. Ann was taking a vacation
+from her life, she had laughingly put it to Wayne. That was why she
+played so much with Worth and the dogs and talked so little of grown-up
+things. Though one could never completely take a vacation from one's
+life; that was why Ann looked that way when she was sometimes sitting
+very still and did not know that any one was looking at her.
+
+Persuasion was the easier as fabrication was but a fanciful dress for
+truth. Imagination did not have it all to do; it only followed where Ann
+called--blazing its own trail.
+
+Yet there were times when the country of make-believe was swept down by a
+whirlwind, a whirlwind of realization which crashed through Katie's
+consciousness and knocked over the fancyings. Those whirlwinds would come
+all unannounced; when Ann seemed most Ann, playing with Worth, perhaps
+wearing one of the prettiest dresses and smilingly listening to something
+Wayne was telling her had happened over at the shops. And on the heels of
+the whirlwind knocking down the country of make-believe would come the
+girl from a vast unknown rushing wildly from--what? What had become of
+that girl? Would she hear from _her_ again? It was almost as if the girl
+made by reality had indeed gone down under the waters that day, and the
+things the years had made her had abdicated in favor of the things Katie
+would make her. And yet did the things the years had made one ever really
+abdicate? Was it because the girl of the years was too worn for
+assertiveness that the girl of fancy could seem the all? Was it only that
+she slumbered--and sometimes stirred a little in her sleep?--And when
+_she_ awoke?
+
+Even to each other they did not speak of that other girl, as if fearing a
+word might wake her. Sometimes they heard her stir; as one day soon
+after Ann's coming Katie had said: "Ann, just what is it is the matter
+with your vocal chords?"
+
+"Why I didn't know anything was," stammered Ann.
+
+"But you seem unable to pronounce my name."
+
+Ann colored.
+
+"It is spelled K-a-t-i-e," Kate went on, "and is pronounced K--T. Try it,
+Ann. See if you can say it."
+
+Ann looked at her. The look itself crossed the border country. "Katie--"
+she choked--and the country of make-believe fell palely away.
+
+But they did not speak of the things they had stirred.
+
+That thing of not saying it had been established the day Ann's bank
+account was opened. Katie had been "over the river," as she called going
+over to the city. Upon returning she found Ann up in her room. She stood
+there unpinning her hat, telling of an automobile accident on the
+bridge--Katie seldom came in without some stirring tale. As she was
+leaving she rummaged in her bag. "And oh yes, Ann," she said, carelessly,
+"here's your bank book. I presumed to draw twenty dollars for you,
+thinking you might need it before you could get over. Oh dear--that
+telephone! And I know it's Wayne for me."
+
+But she did not escape. Ann was waiting for her when she came back
+up stairs.
+
+She held out the book, shaking her head. Her face told that she had been
+pulled back.
+
+"Not money," she said unsteadily. "All the rest of it is bad enough--but
+not money. I'd have no--self-respect."
+
+"Self-respect!" jeered Kate. "I'd have no self-respect if I didn't take
+money. Nobody can be self-respecting when broke. None of the rest of us
+seem to be inquiring into our sources of revenue, so why should you?"
+
+As had happened that other time, in relation to the suit, the thing shot
+out at Ann turned back to her. It had more than once occurred that the
+thing thrown out sparingly persisted as thing to be considered genuinely.
+Her browbeating of Ann--for it was a sort of tender, protective
+browbeating--led her to reach out blindly for weapons, and once in her
+hand many of those weapons proved ideas.
+
+"We take everything we can get," she followed it up, forcing herself from
+interest in the weapon to the use of it, "from everybody we can get it
+from. We take this house from the government--and heaven only knows how
+many sons of toil the government takes it from. I take this money we're
+so stupidly quibbling about now from a company the papers say takes it
+from everybody in reach. Take or you will be taken from is the basis of
+modern finance. Please don't be fanatical, Ann."
+
+"I can't take it," repeated Ann.
+
+Katie looked worried. Then she took new ground. "Well, Ann, if you won't
+take the sane financial outlook, at least be a good sport. We're in this
+game; the money has got to be part of making it go. We'll never get
+anywhere at all if we're going to balk and fuss at every turn. There now,
+honey,"--as if to Worth--"put your book away. Don't lose it; it makes
+them cross to have you lose them. And another principle of modern finance
+with which I am heartily in sympathy is that money should be kept in
+circulation. It encourages embezzlement to leave it in banks too long."
+Then, seeing what was gathering, she said quietly but authoritatively:
+"Leave it unsaid, Ann. Can't we always just leave it unsaid? Nothing
+makes me so uncomfortable as to feel I'm constantly in danger of having
+something nice said to me."
+
+Perhaps Katie knew that countries of make-believe are sensitive things,
+that it does not do to admit you know them for that.
+
+There had been that one time when the hand of reality reached savagely
+into the dream, as if the things the girl had run away from had come to
+claim her. It seemed through that long night that they had claimed her,
+that Ann's "vacation" was over.
+
+Captain Prescott had been dining with them that night and after dinner
+they were sitting out on the porch. He was humming a snatch of something.
+Katie heard a chair scrape and saw that Ann had moved farther into the
+shadow. She was all in shadow save her hand; that Katie could see was
+gripping the arm of her chair.
+
+He turned to Ann. "Did you see 'Daisey-Maisey'?"
+
+"Ann wasn't here then," said Kate.
+
+"Did you see it, Katie?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It was a jolly, joyous sort of thing," he laughed. "Sort of thing to
+make you feel nothing matters. That was the name of that thing I was
+humming. No, not 'Nothing Matters,' but 'Don't You Care.' And there were
+the 'Don't You Care' girls--pink dresses and big black hats. They seemed
+to mean what they sang. They didn't care, certainly."
+
+It was Wayne who spoke. "Think not?"
+
+Ann came a little way out of the shadow. She had leaned toward Wayne.
+
+"Well you'd never know it if they did," laughed Prescott. He turned to
+Wayne. "What's your theory?"
+
+"Oh I have no theory. Just a wondering. Can't see how girls who have
+their living to earn could sing 'Don't You Care' with complete abandon."
+
+Ann leaned forward, looking at him tensely. Then, as if afraid, she
+sank back into shadow. Katie could still see her hand gripping the arm
+of her chair.
+
+"But they're not the caring sort," Prescott was holding.
+
+"Think not?" said Wayne again, in Wayne's queer way.
+
+There was a silence, and then Ann had murmured something and
+slipped away.
+
+Katie followed her; for hours she sat by her bed, holding her hand,
+trying to soothe her. It was almost morning before that other girl, that
+girl they were trying to get away from, would let Ann go to sleep.
+
+Sitting beside the tortured girl that night, hearing the heart-breaking
+little moans which as sleep finally drew near replaced the sobs, Katie
+Jones wondered whether many of the things people so serenely took for
+granted were as absurd--and perhaps as tragically absurd--as Captain
+Prescott's complacent conclusion that the "Don't You Care" girls were
+girls who didn't care.
+
+How she would love--turning it all over in her mind that afternoon--to
+talk some of those things over with "the man who mends the boats"!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+She had only known him for about twenty days--"The man who mends the
+boats"--but she had fallen into the way of referring all interesting
+questions to him. That was perhaps the more remarkable as her eyes had
+never rested upon him.
+
+One morning Worth had looked up from some comparative measurements of the
+tails of Pourquoi and N'est-ce-pas to demand: "Why, Aunt Kate, what do
+you think?"
+
+"There are times," replied Aunt Kate, looking over at the girl swaying
+in the hammock, humming gently to herself, "when I don't know just what
+to think."
+
+"Well sir, what do you think? The man that mends the boats knows more
+'an Watts!"
+
+"Worthie," she admonished, "it's bad business for an army man to
+turn traitor."
+
+"But yes, he does. 'Cause I asked Watts why Pourquoi had more yellow than
+white, and why N'est-ce-pas was more white 'an yellow, and he said I sure
+had him there. He'd be blowed if he knew, and he guessed nobody did,
+'less maybe the Almighty had some ideas about it; but yesterday I asked
+the man that mends the boats, and he explained it--oh a whole lot of long
+words, Aunt Kate. More long words 'an I ever heard before."
+
+"And the explanation? I trust it was satisfactory?"
+
+"I guess it was," replied Worth uncertainly. "'Twas an awful lot of
+long words."
+
+"My experience, too," laughed Aunt Kate.
+
+"With the man that mends the boats?"
+
+"No, with other sages. You see when they're afraid to stay down here on
+the ground with us any longer, afraid they'll be hit with a question that
+will knock them over, they get into little air-ships they have and hurl
+the long words down at our heads until we're too stunned to ask any more
+questions, and in such wise is learning disseminated."
+
+"I'll ask the man that mends the boats if he's got any air-ships. He's
+got most everything up there."
+
+"Up where?"
+
+"Oh, up there,"--with vague nod toward the head of the Island.
+
+"He says he'd like to get acquainted with you, Aunt Kate. He says he
+really believes you might be worth knowing."
+
+Thereupon Aunt Kate's book fell to the floor with a thud of amazement
+that reverberated indignation. "Well upon my word!" gasped she. Then,
+recovering her book--and more--"Why what a kindly gentleman he must be,"
+she drawled.
+
+"Oh yes, he's kind. He's awful kind, I guess. He'll talk to you any time
+you want him to, Aunt Kate. He'll tell you just anything you want to
+know. He said you must be a--I forgot the word."
+
+"Oh no, you haven't," wheedled Aunt Kate. "Try to think of it, dearie."
+
+"Can't think of it now. Shall I ask him again?"
+
+"Certainly not! How preposterous! As if it made the slightest difference
+in the world!"
+
+But it made difference enough for Aunt Kate to ask a moment later: "And
+how did it happen, Worthie, that this kindly philosopher should have
+deemed me worth knowing?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. 'Cause he liked the puppies' names, I guess. I told
+him how their mother was just Queen, but how they was Pourquoi and
+N'est-ce-pas--a 'quirer and 'versalist and so then he said: 'And which is
+Aunt Kate?'"
+
+"Which is Aunt _Kate? What_ did he mean?"
+
+"'Is she content to be just Queen,' he said, 'or is she'--there was a lot
+of long words, you wouldn't understand them, Aunt Kate--I didn't
+either--'does she show a puppyish tendon'--tendon something--'to butt
+into the universe?'"
+
+Suddenly Aunt Kate's face grew pink and she sat straight. "Worth, was
+this one of the men?"
+
+"Oh no, Aunt Kate. He's not one of the men. He's just a man. He's the man
+that mends the boats."
+
+"'The man that mends the boats!' He sounds like a creature in flowing
+robes out of a mythology book, or the being expressing the high and noble
+sentiments calling everybody down in a new-thoughtish play."
+
+From time to time Worth would bring word of him. What boats does he mend,
+Aunt Kate wanted to know, and what business has he landing them on our
+Island? To which came the answer that he mended boats sick unto death
+with speed mania and other social disease, and that he didn't land them
+on the Island, but on an island off the tip of the Island, a tiny island
+which the Lord had thoughtlessly left lying disrespectfully close to the
+Isle of Dignity. Katie was too true a romancer to inquire closely about
+the man who mended the boats, for she liked to think of him as an unreal
+being who only touched the earth off the tip of the Island, and only
+touched humanity through Worth. That wove something alluringly
+mysterious--and mysteriously alluring--about the man who made sick boats
+well, whereas had she given rein to the possibility of his belonging to
+the motorboat factory across the river, and scientifically testing
+gasoline engines it would be neither proper nor interesting that her
+young nephew should run back and forth with pearls of wit and wisdom. It
+developed that Worth visited this tip of the Island with the ever
+faithful Watts, and that one day the boat mender and Watts had--oh just
+the awfulest fight with words Worth had ever heard. It was about the
+Government, which the man who mended the boats said was running on one
+cylinder, drawing from patriotic Watts the profane defense that it had
+all the power it needed for blowing up just such fools as that! He
+further held that soldiers were first-class dishwashers and should be
+brave enough to demand first-class dishwashing pay. Katie had chuckled
+over that. But she had puzzled rather than chuckled over the statement
+that the first war the saddles manufactured on that Island would see
+would be the war over the manufacturing of them. Now what in the world
+had he meant by that? She had asked Wayne, but Wayne had seemed so
+seriously interested in the remark, and asked such direct questions as to
+who made it, that she had tried to cover her tracks, thinking perhaps the
+man who mended the boats could be thrown into the guard-house for saying
+such dark things about army saddles.
+
+On the way home from that talk Watts had branded the man who mended the
+boats as one of them low-down anarchists that ought to be shot at
+sunrise. Things was as they _was_, held Watts, and how could anybody but
+a fool expect them to be any way but the way they _was_? It showed what
+_he_ was--and after that Worth had had no more fireworks of thought for a
+week, Watts standing guard over the world as it was.
+
+But he slipped into an odd place in Katie's life of wonderings and
+fancyings, and that life of musing and questioning was so big and so real
+a life in those days. He was something to shoot things out at, to hang
+things to. She held imaginary conversations with him, demolished him in
+imaginary arguments only to stand him up and demolish him again.
+Sometimes she quite winked with him at the world as it was, and at other
+times she withdrew to lofty heights and said cutting things. In more
+friendly mood she asked him questions, sometimes questions he could not
+answer, and she could not answer them either, and then their thoughts
+would hover around together, brooding over a world of unanswerable
+things. All her life she had held those imaginary conversations, but
+heretofore it had been with her horse, her dog, the trees, a white cloud
+against the blue, something somewhere. None of the hundreds of nice
+people she knew had ever moved her to imaginary conversations. And so now
+it was stimulating--energizing--not to have to diffuse her thought into
+the unknown, but to direct it at, and through, the man who mended the
+boats and said strange things to Worth up at the tip of the Island.
+
+And he came at a time when she had great need of him. Never before
+had there been so many things to start one on imaginary conversations,
+conversations which ended usually in a limitless wondering. Since Ann had
+come the simplest thought had a way of opening a door into a vast
+country.
+
+Too many doors were opening that afternoon. She was making no headway
+with the letters she had told herself she would dispose of while Ann and
+Captain Prescott were out on the links.
+
+The letter from Harry Prescott's mother was the most imperative. She was
+returning from California and sent some inquiries as to the habitability
+of her son's house.
+
+Katie was thinking, as she re-read it, that it was a letter with a
+background. It expressed one whom dead days loved well. The writer of
+the letter seemed to be holding in life all those gentlewomen who had
+formed her.
+
+In a short time Mrs. Prescott would be at the Arsenal. That meant a more
+difficult game. Did it also mean an impossible one?
+
+Yet Katie would prefer showing her Ann to Mrs. Prescott than to Zelda
+Fraser. Zelda, the fashionable young woman, would pounce upon the absence
+of certain little tricks and get no glimmer of what Katie vaguely called
+the essence. Might not Mrs. Prescott find the reality in the
+possibilities? "It comes to this," Katie suddenly saw, "I'm not shamming,
+I'm revealing. I'm not vulgarly imitating; I'm restoring. The connoisseur
+should be the first to appreciate that."
+
+It turned her off into one of those long paths of wondering, paths which
+sometimes seemed to circle the whole of the globe. It was on those paths
+she frequently found the man who mended the boats waiting for her.
+Sometimes he was irritating, turning off into little by-paths, by-paths
+leading off to the dim source of things. Katie could not follow him
+there; she did not know her way; and often, as to-day, he turned off
+there just when she was most eager to ask him something. She would ask
+him what he thought about backgrounds. How much there was in that thing
+of having the background all prepared for one, in simply fitting into the
+place one was expected to fit into. How many people would create for
+themselves the background it was assumed they belonged in just because
+they had been put in it? Suddenly she laughed. She had a most absurd
+vision of Jove--Katie believed it would be Jove--standing over humanity
+with some kind of heroic feather duster and mightily calling
+"Shoo!--Shoo!--Move on!--Every fellow find his place for himself!"
+
+Such a scampering as there would be! And how many would be let stay in
+the places where they had been put? Who would get the nice corners it had
+been taken for granted certain people should have just because they had
+been fixed up for them in advance? How about the case of Miss Katherine
+Wayneworth Jones? Would she be ranked out of quarters?
+
+Certain it was that a very choice corner had been fitted up for said
+Katherine Wayneworth Jones. People said that she belonged in her corner;
+that no one else could fit it, that she could not as well fit anywhere
+else. But she was not at all sure that under the feather duster act that
+would give her the right of possession. People were so stupid. Just
+because they saw a person sitting in a place they held that was the place
+for that person to be sitting. Katie almost wished that mighty "Shoo!"
+would indeed reverberate 'round the world. It would be such fun to see
+them scamper and squirm. And would there not be the keenest of
+satisfaction in finding out what sort of place one would fit up for one's
+self if none had been fitted up for one in advance?
+
+Few people were called upon to prove themselves. Most people judged
+people as they judged pictures at an exhibition. They went around with a
+catalogue and when they saw a good name they held that they saw a good
+picture. And when they did not know the name, even though the picture
+pleased them, they waited around until they heard someone else saying
+good things, then they stood before it murmuring, "How lovely."
+
+She had put Ann in the catalogue; she had seen to it that she was
+properly hung, and she herself had stood before her proclaiming something
+rare and fine. That meant that Ann was taken for granted. And being taken
+for granted meant nine-tenths the battle.
+
+It would be fun to fool the catalogue folks. And she need have no
+compunctions about lowering the standard of art because the picture she
+had found out in the back room and surreptitiously hung in the night
+belonged in the gallery a great deal more than some of the pictures which
+had been solemnly carried in the front way. It was the catalogue folks,
+rather than the lovers of art, were being imposed upon.
+
+And Mrs. Prescott, though to be sure a maker of catalogues, was also a
+lover of art. There lay Katie's hope for her, and apology to her.
+
+Though she was apprehensive, a stronger light was to be turned on--that
+was indisputable. "You and I know, dear Queen," Katie confided to the
+member of her sex lying at her feet, "that men are not at all difficult.
+You can get them to swallow most anything--if the girl in the case is
+beautiful enough. And feminine enough! Masculine dotes on discovering
+feminine--but have you ever noticed what the rest of the feminine dote on
+doing to that discovery? Women can even look at wondrous soft brown eyes
+and lovely tender mouths through those 'Who was your father?' 'specs'
+they keep so well dusted. The manner of holding a teacup is more
+important than the heart's deep dreams. When it comes to passing
+inspection, the soul's not in it with the fork. We know 'em--don't we,
+old Queen?"
+
+Queen wagged concurrence, and Katie pulled herself sternly back to
+her letters.
+
+Mrs. Prescott spoke of the chance of her son's being ordered away. "I
+hope not," she wrote, "for I want the quiet summer for him. And for
+myself, too. The great trees and the river, and you there, dear Katie, it
+seems the thing I most desire. But we of the army learn often to
+relinquish the things we most desire. We, the homeless, for in the
+abiding sense we are homeless, make homes possible. Think of it with
+pride sometimes, Katie. Our girls think of it all too little now. I
+sometimes wonder how they can forego that just pride in their traditions.
+During this spring in the West my thoughts have many times turned to
+those other days, days when men like your father and my husband performed
+the frontier service which made the West of to-day possible. Recently at
+a dinner I heard a young woman, one of the 'advanced' type, and I am
+sorry to say of army people, speak laughingly to one of our men of the
+uselessness of the army. She was worthy nothing but scorn, or I might
+have spoken of some of the things your mother and I endured in those days
+of frontier posts. And now we have a California--serene--fruitful--and
+can speak of the uselessness of the army! Does the absurdity of it never
+strike them?"
+
+Katie pondered that; wondered if Mrs. Prescott's attitude and spirit were
+not passing with the frontier. Few of the army girls she knew thought of
+themselves as homeless, or gave much consideration to that thing of
+making other homes possible, save, to be sure, the homes they were
+hoping--and plotting--to make for themselves. And she could not see that
+the "young woman" was answered. The young woman had not been talking
+about traditions. Probably the young woman would say that yesterday
+having made to-day possible it was quite time to be quit of yesterday.
+"Though to be sure," Katie now answered her, "while we may not seem to be
+doing anything, we're keeping something from being done, and that perhaps
+is the greatest service of all. Were it not for us and our dear navy we
+should be sailed on from East and West, marched on from North and South.
+At least that's what we're told by our superiors, and are you the kind of
+young woman to question what you're told by your superiors? Because if
+you are!--I'd like to meet you."
+
+Her letter continued: "Harry writes glowingly of your charming friend.
+Strange that I am not able to recall her, though to be sure I knew little
+of you in those years abroad. Was she a school friend? I presume so.
+Harry speaks of her as 'the dear sort of girl,' not leaving a clear image
+in my mind. But soon my vision will be cleared."
+
+"Oh, will it?" mumbled Kate. "I don't know whether it will or not. 'The
+dear sort of girl!' And I presume the young goose thought he had given a
+vivid picture."
+
+She turned to Major Darrett's note: a charming note it was to turn to. He
+had the gift of making himself very real--and correspondingly
+attractive--in those notes.
+
+A few days before she had been telling Ann about Major Darrett. "He's a
+bachelor," she had said, "and a joy." Ann had looked vague, and Katie
+laughed now in seeing that her characterization was broad as "the dear
+sort of girl."
+
+It was probable Major Darrett would relieve one of the officers at the
+Arsenal. He touched it lightly. "Should fate--that part of it dwelling in
+Washington--waft me to your Island, Katie Jones, I foresee a summer to
+compensate me for all the hard, cruel, lonely years."
+
+Kate smiled knowingly; not that she actually knew much to be
+knowing about.
+
+She wondered why she did not disapprove of Major Darrett. Certain she was
+that some of the things which had kept his years from being hard, cruel,
+and lonely were in the category for disapproval. But he managed them so
+well; one could not but admire his deftness, and admiration was weakening
+to disapproval. One disapproved of things which offended one, and in this
+instance the results of the things one knew one should disapprove were so
+far from offensive that one let it go at smiling knowingly, mildly
+disapproving of one's self for not disapproving.
+
+Ann had not responded enthusiastically to Katie's drawing of Major
+Darrett. She had not seemed to grasp the idea that much was forgiven the
+very charming; that ordinary standards were not rigidly applied to the
+extraordinarily fascinating. When Katie was laughingly telling of one of
+the Major's most interesting flirtations Ann's eyes had seemed to crouch
+back in that queer way they had. Katie had had an odd sense of Ann's
+disapproving of her--disapproving of her for her not disapproving of him.
+More than once Ann had given her that sense of being disapproved of.
+
+As with all things in the universe just then, he was a new angle back to
+Ann. If he were to come there--? For Major Darrett would not at all
+disapprove of those eyes of Ann's. And yet his own eyes would see more
+than Wayne and Harry Prescott had seen. Major Darrett had been little on
+the frontier, but much in the drawing-room; he had never led up San Juan
+hill, but he had led many a cotillion. He had had that form of military
+training which makes society favorites. As to Ann, he would have the
+feminine "specs" and the masculine delight at one and the same time. What
+of that union?
+
+Katie's eyes began to dance. She hoped he would come. He would be a foe
+worthy her steel. She would have to fix up all her fortifications--look
+well to her ammunition. Whatever might be held against Major Darrett it
+could not be said he was not worthy one's cleverest fabrications. But the
+triumph of holding one's own with a veteran!
+
+Then of a sudden she wondered what the man who mended the boats would
+think of the Major.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Before she had finished her writing Wayne and Worth came up on the porch.
+The little boy had been over at the shops with his father.
+
+"Father," he was saying, imagination under the stimulus of things he had
+been seeing, "I suppose our gun will kill 'bout forty thousand million
+folks--won't it, father?"
+
+"Why no, son, I hope it's not going to be such a beastly gun as that,"
+laughed Captain Jones.
+
+"Yes, but, father, isn't a good gun a gun that kills folks? What's the
+use making a gun at all if it isn't going to kill folks?"
+
+His father looked at him strangely. "Sonny," he said, "you're hitting
+home rather hard."
+
+"Your reasoning is poor, Worth," said Katie; "fact is we make guns to
+keep folks from getting killed. If we didn't have the guns everybody
+would get killed. Now don't say 'why.'"
+
+"'Cause you don't know why," calmly remarked Worth, adding: "I'll ask
+Watts, and if he don't know I'll ask the man that mends the boats."
+
+"Do," said Katie.
+
+Having, to his own satisfaction, exterminated some forty thousand million
+members of the human family, Worth opened attack on the puppies. He was
+an Indian and they were poor white settlers and he was going to kill
+them. No poor white settlers had ever received an Indian so joyously.
+
+But he seemed to have left those forty thousand million souls on his
+father's hands. Wayne was looking very serious. He did not respond
+to--did not appear to have heard--Katie's remark about Worth needing some
+new clothes.
+
+Katie wondered what he was thinking about; she supposed some new kind of
+barrel steel. She took it for granted that nothing short of steel could
+produce _that_ look.
+
+She was proud of the things that look had done, proud of the distinction
+her brother had already won in the army, proud, in advance, of the things
+she was confident he would do.
+
+Captain Jones was at the Arsenal on special detail. An invention of his
+pertaining to the rifle was being manufactured for tests. There was keen
+interest in it and its final adoption seemed assured. It was of
+sufficient importance to make his name one of those conspicuous in army
+affairs. He had already several lesser things--devices pertaining to
+equipment--to his credit and was looked upon as one of the most promising
+of the army's men of invention.
+
+And aside from her pride in him, Katie's affection for her brother was
+deep, intensified because of their being alone. Their father had died
+when Katie was sixteen, died as a result of wounds received long before
+in frontier skirmishes, where he had been one of those many brave men to
+serve fearlessly and faithfully, men who gave more to their country than
+their country perhaps understood. Their mother survived him only two
+years. Katie sometimes said that her mother, too, gave her life to her
+country. Her health had been undermined by hard living on the
+frontier--she who had been so tenderly reared in her southern home--and
+in the end she also died from a wound, that wound dealt the heart in the
+death of her husband. Katie revered her father's memory and adored her
+mother's, and while youth and Katie's indomitable spirit made it hard for
+one to think of her as sad, the memory of those two was the deepest,
+biggest thing in the girl's life.
+
+"Oh Katie," Wayne suddenly roused himself to say, "your cousin Fred
+Wayneworth is in town. I had luncheon with him over the river. He sent
+all sorts of messages to you."
+
+"Well--really! Messages! Why this haughty aloofness? Doesn't he mean to
+come over?"
+
+"Oh yes, of course; to-morrow--perhaps to-night. He's fearfully
+busy--stopped off on his way East. There's a row on in the forest service
+about some of Osborne's timber claims--mining claims, too, I believe--in
+Colorado. Those years in the West have developed Fred splendidly. He's
+gone from boy to man, and a fine specimen of man, at that."
+
+"He likes his work?"
+
+"Full of it." Wayne was silent for a moment, then added: "I envied him."
+
+It startled Katie. "Envied him? Why--why, Wayne? Surely you're lucky."
+
+He laughed: not the laugh of a man too pleased with his luck. "Oh, am I?
+Perhaps I am, but just the same I envy a fellow who can look that way
+when talking about his work."
+
+"But you have a work, Wayne."
+
+"No, I have a place."
+
+She grew more and more puzzled. "Why, Wayne, you've been all wrapped up
+in this thing you were doing."
+
+He threw his cigarette away impatiently. "Oh yes, just for the sake of
+doing it. I get a certain satisfaction in scheming things out. I must
+say, however, I'd like to scheme out something I'd get some satisfaction
+in having schemed out. A morsel of truth dropped from the mouth of a babe
+a minute ago. You may have observed, Katie, that his inquiry was more
+direct and reasonable than your reply. An improvement on a rifle. Not
+such a satisfying thing to leave to a rifle eliminating future."
+
+"But I didn't know the army admitted it was to be a rifle eliminating
+future."
+
+"I'm not saying that the army does," he laughed.
+
+He passed again to that look of almost passionate concentration which
+Katie had always supposed meant metallic fouling or some--to her--equally
+incomprehensible thing. He emerged from it to exclaim tensely: "Oh I get
+so sick of the spirit of the army!"
+
+Instinctively Katie looked around. He saw it, and laughed.
+
+"There you go! We've made a perfect fetich of loyalty. It's a different
+sort of loyalty those forestry fellows have--a more live, more
+constructive loyalty. The loyalty that comes, not through form, but
+through devotion to the work--a common interest in a common cause. Ours
+is built on dead things. Custom, and the caste--I know no other
+word--just the bull-headed, asinine, undemocratic caste that custom has
+built up."
+
+"And yet--there must be discipline," Katie murmured: it seemed dreadful
+Wayne should be tearing down their house in that rude fashion, house in
+which they had dwelt so long, and so comfortably.
+
+"Discipline is one thing. Bullying's another. I've never been satisfied
+discipline couldn't be enforced without snobbery. To-day Solesby--one
+year out of West Point!--walked through a shop I was in. He passed men
+working at their machines--skilled mechanics, many of them men of
+intelligence, ideas, character--as though he were passing so much cattle.
+I wanted to take him by the neck and throw him out!"
+
+"Oh well," protested Katie, "one year out of the Point! He's yet to learn
+men are not cattle."
+
+"Well, Leonard never learned it. His back gets some black looks, let me
+tell you."
+
+"Wayne dear," she laughed, "I'm afraid you're not talking like an officer
+and a gentleman."
+
+"I get tired talking like an officer and a gentleman. Sometimes I feel
+like talking like a man."
+
+"But couldn't you be court-martialed for doing that?" she laughed.
+
+"I think Leonard thinks I should be."
+
+"Why--why, Wayne?"
+
+"Because I talk to the men. There's a young mechanic who has been
+detailed to me, and he and I get on famously. All too famously, I take it
+Leonard thinks. He came in to-day when this young Ferguson was telling me
+some things about his union. He treated Ferguson like a dog and me like a
+suspicious character."
+
+"Dear me, Wayne," she murmured, "don't get in trouble."
+
+"Trouble!" he scoffed. "Well if I can get in trouble for talking with an
+intelligent man I'm working with about the things that man knows--then
+let me get in trouble! I'd rather talk to Ferguson than Solesby--we've
+more in common. Oh I'll get in no trouble," he added grimly. "Leonard
+knows it wouldn't sound well to say it. But he feels it, just the same.
+Right there's the difference between our service and this forest service.
+That's where they're democrats and we're fossils. Look at the difference
+in the spirit of the ranger and the spirit of the soldier! And it's not
+because they're whipped into line and bullied and snarled at. It's
+because they're treated like men--and made to feel they're a needed part
+of a big whole. You should hear Fred tell of the way men meet in this
+forest service--superintendent meeting ranger on a common ground. And
+why? Because they're doing something constructive. Because the work's the
+thing that counts. You'll see what it's done for Fred. The boy has a real
+dignity; not the stiff-necked kind he'd acquire around an army post, but
+the dignity that comes with the consciousness of being, not in the
+service, but of service."
+
+He fell silent there, and Katie watched him. He had never spoken to her
+that way before--she had not dreamed he felt like that; heretofore it
+had been only through laughing little jibes at the army she had had any
+inkling of his feeling toward it. That she had not taken seriously; half
+the people she knew in the service jibed at it to others in the service.
+This depth of feeling disturbed her, moved her to defense. After a
+moment's consideration she emerged triumphant with the Panama canal.
+
+He shook his head. "When you consider the percentage of the army so
+engaged, you can't feel as happy about it as you'd like to. We ought all
+to be digging Panama canals!"
+
+"Heavens, Wayne--we don't need them."
+
+"Plenty of things we do need."
+
+"Well I don't think you're fair to the army, Wayne. You're not looking
+into it--deeply enough. You're doing just as much as Fred, for in
+safeguarding the country you permit this constructive work to go on. As
+to our formalities--they have run off into absurdity at some points, but
+it was a real spirit created those very forms."
+
+"True. And now the spirit's dead and the form's left--and what's so
+absurd as a form that rattles dead bones?"
+
+"Father didn't feel as you do, Wayne."
+
+"He had no cause to. He was needed. But we don't need the army on the
+frontier now. That's _done_. And we do need the forest service--the
+thing to build up. There's no use harking back to traditions. The world
+moves on too fast for that. Question is--not what did you do
+yesterday--but what good are you to-day--what are you worth to-morrow?
+Oh, I'm not condemning the army half so much as I'm sympathizing with
+it," he laughed. "It's full of live men who want to be doing
+something--instead of being compelled to argue that they're some good.
+They get very tired saying they're useful. They'd like to make it
+self-evident."
+
+"Well, perhaps we'll have a war with Japan," said Katie consolingly.
+
+"Perhaps we will. Having an army that's spoiling for it, I don't see how
+we can very well miss it."
+
+"But if we had no army we certainly should have a war."
+
+His silence led Katie to gasp: "Wayne, are you
+becoming--anti-militarist?"
+
+He laughed. "Oh, I don't know what I'm becoming. But as to myself--I do
+know this. There would be more satisfaction in constructive work than
+in work that constructs only that it may be ready to destroy. I would
+find it more satisfying to help give my country itself--through natural
+and legitimate means--than stand ready to give it some corner of some
+other country."
+
+"But to keep the other country from getting a corner of it?"
+
+"Doesn't it occur to you, Katie, that as a matter of fact the other
+country might like a chance to develop its resources? We're like a crowd
+of boys with rocks in their hands and all afraid to throw down the
+rocks. If one did, the others might be immensely relieved. It seems
+rather absurd, standing there with rocks nobody wants to
+throw--especially when there are so many other things to be doing--and
+everybody saying, 'I've got to keep mine because he's got his.' Would you
+call that a very intelligent gang of kids? Ferguson says it's the
+workingmen of the world will bring about disarmament. That they're coming
+to feel their common cause as workers too keenly to be forced into war
+with each other."
+
+"That's what the man that mends the boats says," piped up Worth. "He says
+that when they're all socialists there won't be any wars--'cause
+nobody'll go. But Watts says that day'll never come, thank God."
+
+"Are you thanking God for yourself or for Watts, sonny?" laughed his
+father. "And who, pray, is the man that mends the boats?"
+
+"The man that mends the boats, father, is a man that's 'most as smart
+as you are."
+
+"It has been a long time," gravely remarked Wayne, "since any man has
+been brought to my attention so highly commended as that."
+
+But their talk had been sobering to them both, for they spoke seriously
+then of various things. It was probable that before long Wayne would be
+ordered to Washington. He wanted to know what Katie would do then. Why
+not spend next season in Washington with him? Just what were her plans?
+
+But Katie had no plans. And suddenly she realized how completely all
+things had been changed by the coming of Ann.
+
+She had spent much of her life in Washington. She loved it; loved its
+official life, in particular its army and diplomatic life; and loved,
+too, that rigidly guarded old Washington to which, as her mother's
+daughter, the door stood open to her. Her uncle, the Bishop, lived in a
+city close by. His home was the fixed spot which Katie called home. In
+Washington--and near it--she would find friends on all sides. Just
+thirty days before she would have gloated over that prospect of next
+season there.
+
+But she was not prepared to bombard Washington with Ann. The mere
+suggestion carried realization of how propitious things had been, how
+simple she had found it.
+
+The little game they were playing seemed to cut Katie off from her life,
+too, and without leaving the luxury of feeling sorry for herself. With it
+all, Washington did not greatly allure. Washington, as she knew it, was
+distinctly things as they were; just now nothing allured half so much as
+those long dim paths of wondering leading off into the unknown.
+
+Suddenly she had an odd sense of Washington--all that it represented to
+her--being the play, the game, the thing made to order and seeming very
+tame to her because she was dwelling with real things. It was as if her
+craft of make-believe was the thing which had been able to carry her
+toward the shore of reality.
+
+And so she told Wayne that she had no plans. Perhaps she would go back to
+Europe with Ann.
+
+He turned quickly at that. "She goes back?"
+
+"Oh yes--I suppose so."
+
+"But why? Where? To whom?"
+
+"Why? Why, why not? Why does one go anywhere? Florence is to Ann what
+Washington is to me--a sort of center."
+
+"Katie," he asked abruptly, "has she no people? No ties? Isn't
+she--moored any place?"
+
+"Am I 'moored' any place?" returned Kate.
+
+"Why, yes; to the things that have made you--to the things you're part
+of. By moored I don't mean necessarily a fixed spot. But I have a
+feeling--"
+
+He seemed either unable or unwilling to express it, and instead laughed:
+"I'd like to know how much her father made a month, and whether her
+mother was a good cook--a few little things like that to make her less a
+shadow. Do you really get _at_ her, Katie?"
+
+"Why--why, yes," stammered Katie; "though I told you, Wayne, that Ann was
+different. Quiet--and just now, sad."
+
+"I don't think of her as particularly quiet," he replied; "and sad isn't
+it, either. I think of her"--he paused and concluded uncertainly--"as a
+girl in a dream."
+
+"Her dream or your dream, Wayne?" laughed Katie, just to turn it.
+
+She was throwing sticks for the puppies and missed his startled look.
+
+But it was Katie who was startled when he said, still uncertainly, and
+more to himself than to Katie: "Though she's so real."
+
+Ann and Captain Prescott were coming toward them. She had never looked
+less like a girl in a dream. Laughing and jesting with her companion, she
+looked simply like an exceedingly pretty girl having a very good time.
+
+"But you like Ann, don't you, Wayne?" Katie asked anxiously.
+
+"Yes," said Wayne, "I like her."
+
+She came running up the steps to them, flushed, happy, as free from
+self-consciousness as Worth would have been. "Katie," she cried, "I
+played the last one in four. Didn't I?" turning proudly to the Captain
+for endorsement.
+
+Both men were looking at her with pleasure: cheeks flushed, eyes
+glowing, hair a little disheveled and a little damp about the forehead,
+panting a little, her lithe, beautiful body swaying gently, hands
+outstretched to show Wayne how she had hardened her palms, Ann had never
+seemed so lovely and so live. In that moment it mattered not whether one
+knew anything about the earning capacity of her father or the culinary
+abilities of her mother. _She_ was real. Real as sunshine and breezes
+and birds are real, as Worth and the puppies tumbling over each other on
+the grass were real, as all that is life-loving is real. And not
+detached, not mistily floating, but moored to that very love of life,
+capacity for life, to that look she had awakened in the faces of the men
+to whom she was talking. It seemed a paltry thing just then to wonder
+whether Ann was child of farmer, or clothing merchant, or great artist.
+She was Life's child. Love's child. Love's child--only she had not
+dwelt all her days in her father's house. But it was her father's house;
+that was why, once warmed and comforted, she could radiantly take her
+place. Watching her as she was going over her game for Wayne,
+demonstrating some of her strokes, and her slim, beautiful body made
+even the poor strokes wonderful things, Katie was not speculating on
+whether Ann had come from Chicago, or Florence, or Big Creek. She was
+thinking that Ann was product, expression, of the love of the world,
+that love which had brought the laughter and the tears, brought the hope
+and the radiance and the tragedy of life.
+
+And then, suddenly and inexplicably, Katie was afraid. Of just what,
+she did not know; of things--big, tempestuous things--which Katie did
+not very well understand, and which Ann--perhaps not understanding
+either--seemed to embody. "Come, Ann," she said, "we must make ready
+for dinner."
+
+Captain Prescott called after them that next he was going to teach Ann to
+ride. "Oh, we'll make an army girl of her yet," he laughed.
+
+Ann turned back. "Do you know," she said, "I don't understand the army
+very well. Just what is it the army does?"
+
+They laughed. "Ask the peace society in Boston," suggested Prescott.
+
+But Wayne said: "Some day soon you and I'll take a ride on the river and
+I'll deliver a little lecture on the army."
+
+"Oh, that will be nice," said Ann radiantly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+It was astonishing how Ann seemed to find herself in just that thing of
+being able to learn to play golf.
+
+They were gay at dinner that night, and Ann was as gay as any one. She
+continued to talk about her game, which they jestingly permitted her to
+do, and the men told some good golf stories which she entered into
+merrily. It was Katie who was rather quiet. While they still lingered
+around the table Fred Wayneworth joined them, and Katie, eager to talk
+with him of his people and his work, left Ann alone with Wayne and
+Captain Prescott, something which up to that time she had been reluctant
+to do. But to-night she did not feel Ann clinging to her, calling out to
+her, as she had felt her before. She seemed on surer ground; it was as if
+golf had given her a passport. From her place in the garden with her
+cousin, Ann's laugh came down to them from time to time--just a girl's
+happy laugh.
+
+"Who is your stunning friend, Katie?" Fred asked. "No, stunning doesn't
+fit her, but lovely. She is lovely, isn't she?"
+
+"Ann's very pretty," said Kate shortly.
+
+"Oh--pretty," he laughed, "that won't do at all. So many girls are
+pretty, and I never saw any girl just like her."
+
+Again she was vaguely uneasy, and the uneasiness irritated her, and then
+she was ashamed of the irritation. Didn't she want poor Ann to have a
+good time--and feel at home--and be admired? Did she care for her when
+she was somber and shy, and resent her when happy and confident? She told
+herself she was glad to hear Ann laughing; and yet each time the happy
+little laugh stirred that elusive foreboding in the not usually
+apprehensive soul of Katie Jones.
+
+"I want to tell you about my girl, Katie," her cousin was saying. "I've
+got the _only_ girl."
+
+He was off into the story of Helen: Helen, who was a clerk in the forest
+service and "put it all over" any girl he had ever known before, who was
+worth the whole bunch of girls he had known in the East--girls who had
+been brought up like doll-babies and had doll-baby brains. Didn't Katie
+agree that a girl who could make her own way distanced the girls who
+could do nothing but spend their fathers' money?
+
+In her heart, Katie did; had she been defending Fred to his father, the
+Bishop, or to his Bostonian mother, she would have grown eloquent for
+Helen. But listening to Fred, it seemed something was being attacked, and
+she, unreasonably enough, instead of throwing herself with the aggressor
+was in the stormed citadel with her aunt and uncle and the girls with the
+doll-baby brains.
+
+And she had been within the citadel that afternoon when Wayne was
+attacking the army. She gloried in attacks of her own, but let some one
+else begin one and she found herself running for cover--and to defense.
+She wondered if that were anything more meaningful than just natural
+perversity.
+
+The Bishop had wanted his son for the church; but Fred not taking
+amicably to the cloth, he had urged the navy. Fred had settled that by
+failing to pass the examinations for Annapolis. Failing purposely, his
+father stormily held; a theory supported by the good work he did
+subsequently at Yale. There he became interested in forestry, again to
+the disapproval of his parents, who looked upon forestry as an upstart
+institution, not hallowed by the mellowing traditions of church or navy.
+Now they would hold that Helen proved it.
+
+And Helen did prove something. Certain it was that from neither church
+nor navy would Fred have seen his Helen in just this way.
+
+Perhaps it was that democracy Wayne had been talking about. Perhaps
+this democracy was a thing not contented with any one section of a
+man's life. Perhaps once it _had_ him--it had its way with him. Katie
+thought of the last thirty days--of paths leading out from other paths.
+Once one started--
+
+Fred's father had never started. Bishop Wayneworth was only democratic
+when delivering addresses on the signers of the Declaration of
+Independence. The democracy of the past was sanctified; the democracy of
+the present, pernicious and uncouth. Thought of her uncle put Katie on
+the outside, eyes dancing with the fun of the attack.
+
+"Who are her people, Fred?"
+
+"Oh, Western people--ranchers; best sort of people. They raised the best
+crop of potatoes in the valley this year."
+
+Katie yearned to commend the family of her daughter-in-law to her Aunt
+Elizabeth with the boast that they raised the best crop of potatoes in
+the valley!
+
+"They had hard sledding for a long time; but they're making a go of it
+now. They've worked--let me tell you. Helen wouldn't have to work
+now--but don't you say that to Helen! What do you think, Katie? She even
+wants to keep on working after we're married!"
+
+That planted Katie firmly within. "Oh, she can't do that, Fred."
+
+"Well, I wish you'd tell her she can't. That's where we are now. We stick
+on that point. I try to assert my manly authority, but manly authority
+doesn't faze Helen much. She has some kind of theory about the economic
+independence of woman. You know anything about it, Katie?"
+
+"You forget that I'm one of the doll-baby girls," she replied in a light
+voice which trailed a little bitterness on behind.
+
+"Not you! Just before I left I said to Helen: 'Well there's at least one
+relative of mine who will have sense enough to appreciate you, and that's
+my corking cousin Katie Jones!'"
+
+That lured feminine Kate outside again. "Fred," she asked, moved by her
+never slumbering impulse to find out about things, "just what is it you
+care for in Helen? Is she pretty? Funny? Sympathetic? Clever? What?"
+
+She watched his face as he tried to frame it. And watching, she decided
+that whatever kind of girl Helen was, she was a girl to be envied. Yes,
+and to be admired.
+
+"Well I fear it doesn't sound sufficiently romantic," he laughed, "but
+Helen's such a _sturdy_ little wretch. The first things I ever noticed
+about her was her horse sense. She's good on her job, too. She seems to
+me like the West. Though that's rather amusing, for she's such a little
+bit of a thing. She's afraid she'll get fat. But she won't. She's not
+that kind."
+
+"Why of course not," said Katie stoutly, and they laughed and seemed very
+near to Helen in thus scorning her fear of getting fat.
+
+He continued his confidences, laughter from the porch coming down to them
+all the while. Helen was so real--she was so square--so independent--so
+dauntless--and yet she had such dear little ways. He couldn't make her
+sound as nice as she was; Katie would have to come and see her. In fact
+they were counting on Katie's coming. She was to come and stay a long
+time with them and really get acquainted with the West. "I'll tell you
+what Helen's like," he summed it up. "She's very much what you would have
+been if you'd lived out there and had the advantages she has."
+
+Katie stared. No, he was not trying to be funny.
+
+They started toward the house. "Katie," he broke out, "if you have
+any cousinly love in your heart, and know anything about Walt Whitman,
+tell me something, so I can go back and spring it on Helen. She's mad
+over him."
+
+"He was one of the 'advantages' I didn't have," said Katie. "He didn't
+play a heavy part in the thing I had that passed for an education."
+
+"Isn't it the limit the way they 'do you' at those girls' schools?"
+agreed Fred sympathetically. "Helen says that in religion and education
+the more you pay the less you get."
+
+"I should like her," laughed Katie.
+
+But what would her Aunt Elizabeth think of a "sturdy little wretch,"
+believing in the economic independence of woman--whatever that might
+be--with lots of horse sense, and good on her job!
+
+Katie was on the outside now, and for good. If nothing else, the fun was
+out there. And there was something else. That light on Fred's face when
+he was trying to tell about Helen.
+
+Captain Prescott had come down the steps to meet them. "I was just coming
+for you. Don't you think, Katie, it would be fun to look in on the dance
+up here at the club house?"
+
+On the alert for shielding Ann, Katie demurred. It was late, and Ann was
+tired from her golf.
+
+There was an eager little flutter, and Ann had stepped forward. "Oh, I'm
+not at all tired, Katie," she said.
+
+"Does she _look_ tired?" scoffed Wayne. "She's only tired of being made
+to play the invalid. Hurry along, Katie. If you girls aren't
+sufficiently befrocked, frock up at once."
+
+Katie hesitated, annoyed. She felt shorn of the function of her office.
+And she was dubious. The party was one which the younger set over the
+river were giving--at the golf club-house on the Island--for the returned
+college boys. She did not know who might be there--she was always meeting
+friends of her friends. She felt a trifle injured in thinking that just
+for the sake of Ann she had avoided the social life those people offered
+her, and now--
+
+Ann was speaking again, her voice stripped of the happy eagerness. "Just
+as you say, Katie. It is late, and perhaps I am--too tired."
+
+That moved Katie. That a girl should not be privileged to be insistent
+about going to a dance--it seemed depriving her of her birthright. And
+more cruel than taking away a birthright was bringing the consciousness
+of having no birthright.
+
+Katie entered gayly into the plans. They decided that Ann was to wear the
+rose-colored muslin--the same gown she had worn that first night. As she
+was fastening it for her Katie saw that Ann was smiling at herself in the
+mirror, giving herself little pats of approval here and there.
+
+She had not done that the first time Katie helped her into that dress.
+
+But it was the Ann of the first days who turned strained face to her in
+the dressing-room at the club-house. All the girlish radiance--girlish
+vanity--was gone. "Katie," she whispered, "I think I'd better go home.
+I--I didn't know it would be like this. So many people--so many
+lights--and things."
+
+Gently Katie reassured her. Ann needing her was the Ann she knew how to
+care for, and would care for in the face of all the people--all the
+"lights--and things." "You needn't dance if you don't want to," she
+told her. "I'll tell Wayne to look out for you, that you're really not
+able to meet people. If I put him on guard he'll go through fire and
+water for you."
+
+"Yes--I know that," said Ann, and seemed to take heart.
+
+And for some time she did not dance. From the floor Katie Would get
+glimpses of Ann and Wayne sauntering on the veranda on which the
+ball-room opened. More than once she found Ann's eyes following her--Ann
+out in the shadow, looking in at the gay people in the light.
+
+But with the opening of a lively two-step Captain Prescott insisted Ann
+dance with him. "Oh come now," he urged. "Life's too short to sit on the
+side lines. This is a ripping two-step."
+
+The music, too, was urgent--and persuasive. As if without volition she
+fell into gliding little steps, moving toward the dancing floor.
+
+It was Katie who watched that time. She wanted to see Ann dancing. At
+first it puzzled her; she was too graceful not to dance well, but she
+danced as if differently trained, as if unaccustomed to their way of
+dancing. But as the two-step progressed she fell into the swing of it
+and seemed no different from the rest of the pretty, happy girls all
+about her.
+
+She was radiant when she came back to them. Like the golf, the dancing
+seemed to have given her confidence--and confidence, happiness.
+
+Though she still shrank from meeting people. Katie fell in with a whole
+troop of college boys who hovered around her, as both college boys and
+their elders were wont to hover around Katie. She wanted to bring some of
+them to Ann, but Ann demurred. "Oh no, Katie. I don't want to dance with
+any strange men, please. Just our own."
+
+Why, Katie wondered, should one not wish to dance with "strange men." It
+seemed so curious a thing to shrink from. Katie herself had never felt at
+all strange with "strange men." Nice fellows were nice fellows the world
+over, and she never felt farther from strange than when dancing with a
+nice man--strange or otherwise. Even in the swing of her gayety Katie
+wondered what it was could make one feel like that. And she wondered what
+Wayne must think of that plaintive little "Just our own" which she was
+sure he had overheard.
+
+Katie had come out at last to say she thought they should go. Ann must
+not get too tired.
+
+But just then the orchestra began dreaming out a waltz, one of those
+waltzes lovers love to remember having danced together. "Now there," said
+Wayne, "is a nice peaceful waltz. You'll have to wait, Katie," and his
+arm was about Ann and they had glided away together.
+
+Katie told her cousin she would rather not dance. "Let's stand here and
+watch," she said.
+
+Couple after couple passed by, not the crowd of the gay two-step of a few
+moments before. Few were talking; some were gently humming, many
+dreaming--with a veiled smile for the dream. It was one of those waltzes
+to find its way back to cherished moments, flood with lovely color the
+dear things held apart. Fred was saying he wished Helen were there. Katie
+turned from the vivid picture out to the subtle night--warm summer's
+night. The dreaming music carried her back to vanished things--other
+waltzes, other warm summer's nights, to the times when she had been, in
+her light-hearted fashion, in love, to those various flirtations for
+which she had more tenderness than regret just for the glimpses they
+brought. And suddenly the heart of things gone seemed to flow into a
+great longing for that never known tenderness and wildness of feeling
+that sobbed in the music. She was being borne out to the heart of the
+night, and at the heart of the night some one waited for her with arms
+held out. But as she was swept nearer the some one was the man who mended
+the boats! With a little catch of her breath for that sorry twist of her
+consciousness that must make lovely moments ludicrous ones, she turned
+back to the bright room--crowded, colorful, moving room which seemed set
+in the vast, soft night.
+
+Her brother was just passing--her brother and her friend Ann Forrest.
+They did not look out at her. They did not seem to know that Katie was
+near. She had never seen Ann's face so beautiful. It had that beauty
+she had all the while seen as possible for it, only more intense, more
+exalted than she had been able to foresee it. The music stopped on a
+sob. Every one was still for an instant--then they were applauding for
+more. Ann was not clapping. Katie had never seen anything as beautiful
+as that look of rapt loveliness on Ann's face as she stood there
+waiting. She might have been the very spirit of love waiting in the
+mists at the heart of the night. As softly the music began again and
+Wayne once more guided her in and out among those boys and girls--boys
+and girls for whom life had meant little more than laughing and
+dancing--Katie had a piercing vision of the girl with her hands over her
+face stumbling on toward the river.
+
+They were all very quiet on the way home.
+
+That night just as she was falling asleep Katie was startled. It seemed
+at first she was being awakened by a sharp dart, one of those darts of
+apprehension seemed shot into her approaching slumber. But it was nothing
+more than Wayne whistling out on the porch, whistling the dreaming waltz
+which would bear one to the love waiting at the heart of the night.
+
+But Katie was sleepy now. How did Wayne expect any one to go to sleep,
+she thought crossly, whistling at that time of night.
+
+But across the hall was another girl who listened. She had not been
+asleep. She had been lying there looking out into the night, very wide
+awake. And when she heard the whistling she too sat up in bed, swaying
+ever so gently to the rhythm of it, inarticulately following it under her
+breath and smiling a hushed, tender little smile. Something lovely seemed
+stealing over her. But in the wake of it was something else--something
+cold, blighting. Before he had finished she had covered her ears with her
+hands, and was sobbing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+As she looked back afterward upon that span of days, searching them,
+translating, Katie saw that the day of the golf and the dancing marked
+the farthest advance.
+
+After that it was as if Ann, frightened at finding herself so far out in
+the open, shrank back into the shadows. But having gone a little way into
+the open she was not again the same girl of the shadows. Her response to
+life seeming thwarted, there came an incipient sullenness in her view of
+that life which she had reached over the bridge of make-believe.
+
+It did not show itself at once, but afterward it seemed to Katie that the
+next day marked the beginning of Ann's retreat on the bridge of
+make-believe.
+
+And she wondered whether the stray dog or the dangerous literature had
+most to do with that retreat.
+
+Ann was pale and quiet the day after the dance, and it was not merely the
+languor of the girl who has fatigued herself in having a good time.
+
+At luncheon Katie suddenly demanded: "Wayne, where do you get dangerous
+literature?"
+
+"I don't know what form of danger you're courting, Katie. I have a
+valuable work on high explosives, and I have a couple of volumes of De
+Maupassant."
+
+"Oh I weathered all that kind of danger long ago," said she airily. "I
+want the kind that is distressing editors of church papers. The man who
+edits this religious paper uncle sends me is a most unchristian
+gentleman. He devoted a whole page to talking about dangerous literature
+and then didn't tell you where to get it. Well, I'll try Walt Whitman.
+He's very popular in the West, I'm told, and as the West likes danger
+perhaps he's dangerous enough to begin on."
+
+"And you feel, do you, Katie, that the need of your life just now is
+for danger?"
+
+"Yes, dear brother. Danger I must have at any cost. What's the good
+living in a dangerous age if you don't get hold of any of the danger?
+This unchristian editor says that little do we realize what a dangerous
+age it is. And he says it's the literature that's making it so. Then find
+the literature. Only he--beast!--doesn't tell you where to."
+
+Worth there requested the privilege of whispering in his Aunt Kate's ear.
+The ear being proffered, he poured into it: "I guess the man that mends
+the boats has got some dangerous literature, Aunt Kate."
+
+"Tell him to endanger Aunt Kate," she whispered back.
+
+"Do you suppose there is any way, Wayne," she began, after a moment of
+seeming to have a very good time all to herself, "of getting back the
+money we spent for my so-called education?"
+
+"It would considerably enrich us," grimly observed Wayne.
+
+"When doctors or lawyers don't do things right can't you sue them and
+get your money back? Why can't you do the same thing with educators? I'm
+going to enter suit against Miss Sisson. This unchristian editor says
+modern education is dangerous; but there was no danger in the course at
+Miss Sisson's. I want my money back."
+
+"That you may invest it in dangerous literature?" laughed Wayne.
+
+After he had gone Ann was standing at the window, looking down toward the
+river. Suddenly she turned passionately upon Katie. "If you had ever had
+anything to _do_ with danger--you might not be so anxious to find it."
+
+She was trembling, and seemed close to tears. Katie felt it no time to
+explain herself.
+
+And when she spoke again the tears were in her voice. "I can't tell
+you--when I begin to talk about it--" The tears were in her eyes, too,
+then, and upon her cheeks. "You see--I can't--But, Katie--I want
+_you_ to be safe. I want you to be _safe_. You don't know what it
+means--to be safe."
+
+With that she passed swiftly from her room.
+
+Katie sat brooding over it for some time. "If you've been in danger," she
+concluded, "you think it beautiful to be 'safe.' But if you've never been
+anything but 'safe'--" Her smile finished that.
+
+But Katie was more in earnest than her manner of treating herself might
+indicate. To be safe seemed to mean being shielded from life. She had
+always been shielded from life. And now she was beginning to feel that
+that same shielding had kept her from knowledge of life, understanding of
+it. Katie was disturbingly conscious of a great deal going on around her
+that she knew nothing about. Ann wished her to be 'safe'; yet it was Ann
+who had brought a dissatisfaction with that very safety. It was Ann had
+stirred the vague feeling that perhaps the greatest danger of all was in
+being too safe.
+
+Katie felt an acute humiliation in the idea that she might be living in a
+dangerous age and knowing nothing of the danger. She would rather brave
+it than be ignorant of it. Indeed braving it was just what she was keen
+for. But she could not brave it until she found it.
+
+She would find it.
+
+But the next afternoon she went over to the city with Ann and found
+nothing more dangerous than a forlorn little stray dog.
+
+It was evident that he had never belonged to anybody. It was written all
+over his thin, squirming little yellow body that he was Nobody's
+dog--written just as plainly as the name of Somebody's dog would be
+written on a name-plate on a collar.
+
+And it was written in his wistful little watery eyes, told by his
+unconquerable tail, that with all his dog's heart he yearned to be
+Somebody's dog.
+
+So he thought he would try Miss Katherine Wayneworth Jones.
+
+She had a number of errands to do, and he followed her from place to
+place.
+
+She saw him first when she came out from the hair-dresser's. He seemed
+to have been waiting for her. His heart was too experienced in being
+broken for him to dance around her with barks of joy, but he stood a
+little way off and wigglingly tried to ingratiate himself, his eyes
+looking love, and the longing for love.
+
+Impulsively Katie stooped down to him. "Poor little doggie, does he
+want a pat?"
+
+He fairly crouched to the sidewalk in his thankfulness for the pat, his
+tail and eyes saying all they could.
+
+Then she saw that he was following her. "Don't come with me, doggie," she
+said; "please don't. You must go home. You'll get lost."
+
+But in her heart Katie knew he would not get lost, for to be so
+unfortunate as to be lost presupposed being so fortunate as to have a
+home. And she knew that he was of the homeless. But because that was so
+terrible a thing to face, between him and her she kept up that pretense
+of a home.
+
+When she came out from the confectioner's he was waiting for her again, a
+little braver this time, until Katie mildly stamped her foot and told him
+to "Go back!"
+
+At the third place she expostulated with him. "Please, doggie, you're
+making me feel so badly. Won't you run along and play?"
+
+The hypocrisy of that left a lump in her throat as she turned from him.
+
+When she found him waiting again she said nothing at all, but began
+talking to Ann about some flowers in a window across the street.
+
+Ann had seemed to dislike the dog. She would step away when Katie stopped
+to speak to him and be looking intently at something else, as if trying
+not to know that there were such things as homeless dogs.
+
+Watts was waiting for them with the station wagon when they had finished
+their shopping. After they had gone a little way Katie, in the manner of
+one doing what she was forced to do, turned around.
+
+He was coming after them. He had not yet fallen to the ranks of those
+human and other living creatures too drugged in wretchedness to make a
+fight for happiness. Nor was he finding it a sympathetic world in which
+to fight for happiness. At that very moment a man crossing the street was
+giving him a kick. He yelped and crouched away for an instant, but his
+eyes told that the real hurt was in the thought of losing sight of the
+carriage that held Katie Jones. As he dodged in and out, crouching always
+before the possible kick, she could read all too clearly how harassed he
+was with that fear.
+
+They were approaching the bridge. The guard on the bridge would foil that
+quest. He would not permit a forlorn little yellow dog to seek happiness
+by following members of an officer's family across the Government bridge.
+Probably in the name of law and order he would kick him, as the other man
+had done; the dog's bleared little eyes, eyes through which the love
+longing must look, would cast one last look after the unattainable, and
+then, another hope gone, another promise unrealized, he would return
+miserably back to his loveless world, but always--
+
+"Watts," said Katie sharply, "stop a moment, please. I want to get
+something."
+
+Ann was sitting very straight, looking with great absorption up the river
+when Katie got back in the carriage with her dog. Her face was pale, and,
+it seemed to Katie, hard. She moved as far away from the dog as she
+could--her mouth set.
+
+He sat just where Katie put him on the floor, trembling, and looking up
+at her with those asking eyes.
+
+When they were almost home Ann spoke. "You can't take in all the homeless
+dogs of the world, Katie."
+
+"I don't know that that's any reason for not taking in this one," replied
+Katie shortly.
+
+"I hate to have you make yourself feel badly," Ann said tremulously.
+
+"Why shouldn't I let myself feel badly?" demanded Katie roughly. "In a
+world of homeless dogs, why shouldn't I feel badly?"
+
+They made a great deal of fun of Katie's dog. They named him "Pet."
+Captain Prescott wanted to know if she meant to exhibit him at a bench
+show and mention various points he was sure would excite attention.
+
+"What I hate, Katie," said Wayne, "is the way he cringes. None of that
+cringing about Queen."
+
+"And why not?" she demanded hotly. "Because Queen was never kicked.
+Because Queen was never chased down alleys by boys with rocks and tin
+cans. Because Queen never asked for a pat and got a cuff. Nor did Queen's
+mother. Queen hasn't a drop of kicked blood in her. This sorry little dog
+comes from a long line of the kicked and the cuffed. And then you blame
+_him_ for cringing. I'm ashamed of you, Wayne!"
+
+He was about to make laughing retort, but Katie's cheeks were so red, her
+eyes so bright, that he refrained and turned to Ann with: "Katie was
+always great for taking in all kinds of superfluous things."
+
+"Yes," said Ann, "I know."
+
+"And she always takes her outcasts so very seriously."
+
+"Yes," agreed Ann.
+
+"The trouble is, she can't hope to make them over."
+
+"No," admitted Ann, "she can't do that."
+
+"And then she breaks her heart over their forlorn condition."
+
+"Yes," said Ann.
+
+"These wretched things exist in the world, but Katie only makes her own
+life wretched in trying to do anything about them. She can't reach far
+enough to count, so why make herself unhappy?"
+
+"Katie doesn't look at it that way," replied Ann, and turned away.
+
+After the others had gone Katie committed her new dog to Worth. "Honey,
+will you play with him sometimes? I know he's not as nice to play with as
+the puppies, but maybe that's because nobody ever did play with him. The
+things that aren't nice about him aren't his fault, Worthie, so we
+mustn't be hard on him for them, must we? The reason he's so queer acting
+is just because he never had anybody to love him."
+
+Worth was so impressed that he not only accepted the dog himself but
+volunteered to say a good word for him to Watts.
+
+But a little later he brought back word that Watts said the newcomer was
+an ornery cur--that he was born an ornery cur--that he was meant to be an
+ornery cur, and never would be anything but an ornery cur.
+
+"Watts is what you might call a conservative," said Katie.
+
+And not being sure how a conservative member of the United States Army
+would treat a canine child of the alley, Katie went herself to the stable
+that night to see that the newcomer was fed and made to feel at home.
+
+He did not appear to be feeling at all at home. He was crouching in his
+comfortable corner just as dejectedly as he would crouch in the most
+miserable alley his native city afforded.
+
+He came, thankfully but cringingly, out to see Katie. "Doggie," said she,
+"don't be so apologetic. I don't like the apologetic temperament. You
+were born into this world. You have a right to live in it. Why don't you
+assert your right?"
+
+His answer was to look around for the possible tin can.
+
+Watts had approached. "Begging your pardon, Miss Jones, but he's the
+ungrateful kind. There's no use trying to do anything for that kind. He's
+deservin' no better than he gets. He snapped at one of our own pups
+to-night."
+
+"I suppose so," said Kate. "I suppose when you spend your life asking for
+pats and getting kicks you do get suspicious and learn to snap. It seems
+too bad that little dogs that want to be loved should have to learn to
+snarl. You see, Watts, he's had a hard life. He's wandered up and down a
+world where nobody wanted him. He's spent his days trying now this one,
+now that. 'Maybe they'll take me,' he thinks; his poor little heart warms
+at the thought that maybe they will. He opens it up anew every day--opens
+it for a new wound. And now that he's found somebody to say the kind word
+he's still expecting the surly one. His life's shut him out from
+life--even though he wants it. It seems to me rather sad, Watts."
+
+Watts was surveying him dubiously. "That kind is deserving what they get.
+They couldn't have been no other way. And beggin' your pardon, Miss
+Jones, but it's not us that's responsible for his life."
+
+"Isn't it?" said Katie. "I wonder."
+
+Watts not responding to the suggestion of the complexity of
+responsibility, she sought the personal. "As a favor to me, Watts, will
+you be good to the little dog?"
+
+"As a favor to _you_, Miss Jones," said Watts, making it clear that for
+his part--
+
+"Watts," she asked, "how long have you been in the service?"
+
+"'Twill be five years in December, Miss Jones."
+
+"Re-enlistment must mean that you like it."
+
+"I've no complaint to offer, Miss Jones. Of course there are sometimes a
+few little things--"
+
+"Why did you enter the army, Watts?"
+
+"A man has to make a living some way, Miss Jones."
+
+Katie was thinking that she had not asked for an apology.
+
+"And yet I presume you could make more in some other way. Working in
+these shops, for instance."
+
+"There's nothin' sure about them," said Watts.
+
+"The army's certain. And I like things to move on decent and orderly
+like. For one that's willing to recognize his betters, the service is a
+good place, Miss Jones."
+
+"But I suppose there are some not willing to recognize their betters,"
+ventured Kate.
+
+"There's all too many such," said Watts. "All too many nowadays thinks
+they're just as good as them that's above them."
+
+"But you never feel that way, so you are contented and like the
+service, Watts?"
+
+"Yes, Miss. It suits me well enough, Miss Jones. I'm not one to think I
+can make over the world. There's a fellow workin' up here at the point I
+sometimes have some conversation with. I was up there to-night at
+sundown--me and the little boy. Now there's a man, Miss, that don't know
+his place. He's a trouble-maker. He said to me tonight--"
+
+But as Watts was there joined by a fellow-soldier Katie said: "Thank you
+for looking out for the poor little dog, Watts," and turned reluctantly
+to the house.
+
+She would like to have remained; she would like to have talked with the
+other soldier and found out why he entered the service and what he
+thought of it. She was possessed of a great desire to ask people
+questions, find out why they had done what they did and what they thought
+about things other people were doing. Her mind was sending out little
+shoots in all directions and those little shoots were begging for food
+and drink.
+
+She wished she might have a long talk with the "trouble-maker." She
+would like to talk about dogs who had lived in alleys and dogs that had
+been reared in kennels, about soldiers who were willing to recognize
+their betters and soldiers who thought they were as good as some above
+them. She would like to talk about Watts. Watts was the son of an old
+English servant. It was in Watts' blood to "recognize his betters." Was
+that why he could be moved to no sense of responsibility about stray
+dogs? Was that why he was a good man for the service and had no
+ambitions as civilian?
+
+And Ann--she would like to talk to the boat-mending trouble-maker about
+Ann: Why Ann, whom one would expect to find sympathetic with the
+homeless, should be so hard and so queer about forlorn little stray
+dogs. Oh the world was just full of things that Katie Jones wanted to
+talk about that night!
+
+When she reached the house she found that she had just received a
+package by special messenger. She tore off the outer wrapper and on the
+inner was written in red ink: "Danger." Murmuring some inane thing about
+its being her shoes, she ran with the package to her room. For a young
+woman who had all her life received packages of all kinds she was
+inordinately excited.
+
+It held three books. One of them was about women who worked. There
+were pictures of girls working in factories and in different places.
+One was something about evolution, and one was on socialism. And there
+was a pamphlet about the United States Army, and another pamphlet
+about religion.
+
+She looked for a name in the books, but found none. The fly-leaves had
+been torn out.
+
+She was not sorry; she was just as glad to go on thinking of her
+trouble-maker as the man who mended the boats. There was something
+freeing about keeping him impersonal.
+
+But in the book about women she found an envelope addressed: "To one
+looking for trouble."
+
+This was what was type-written on the single sheet it contained:
+
+"Here are a couple of books warranted to disturb one's peace of mind.
+They are marked danger as both warning and commendation. It is absolutely
+guaranteed that one will not be so pleased with the world--and with one's
+self--after reading them. There is more--both books and danger--where
+they came from."
+
+It was signed: "One who loves to lead adventurous souls into
+dangerous paths."
+
+It was two o'clock when Katie turned off her light that night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Perhaps after all it was neither the dog nor the literature, but the
+heat. For the heat of that next day was the kind to prey through
+countries of make-believe. It oppressed every one, but Ann it seemed
+to excite, as if it stirred memories in their sleep. "Don't fight
+heat, Ann," Katie finally admonished, puzzled and disturbed by the way
+Ann kept moving about. "The only way to get ahead of the heat is to
+give up to it."
+
+"Can you always do what you want to do?" Ann demanded with a touch of
+petulance. "Isn't there ever something makes you do things you know
+aren't the things to do?"
+
+"Oh, dear me, yes," laughed Kate. "But you're simply your own worst enemy
+when you try to get ahead of the heat."
+
+"I don't know how you're going to help being your own worst enemy,"
+Ann murmured.
+
+She picked some leaves from the vines and threw them away, purposelessly;
+she made the cat get out of a chair and sat down in it herself, only to
+get up again and pile all the magazines in a different way, not
+facilitating anything by the change. Then, after walking the length of
+the veranda, she stood there looking at Katie: Katie in the coolest and
+coolest-looking of summer dresses, leaning back in a cool-looking
+chair--adjusting herself to things as they were, poised, victorious in
+her submission.
+
+Then Ann said a strange thing. "A hot day's just nothing but a hot day to
+you, is it?"
+
+The words themselves said less than the laugh which followed them--a
+laugh which carried both envy and resentment, which at once admired and
+accused, a laugh straight from the girl they were trying to ignore.
+
+And pray what was a hot day to her, Katie wondered. What _was_ a hot
+day--save a hot day? But as she watched Ann in the next few moments she
+seemed to be surveying a figure oppressed less by heat than by that to
+which the heat laid her open. It seemed that the hot day might stand for
+the friction and the fretting of the world, for things which closed in
+upon one as heat closed in, bore down as heat bore down. As Ann pushed
+back the hair from her forehead it seemed she would push back the weight
+of the years.
+
+It was at that moment that Caroline Osborne, richest and most prominent
+girl of the vicinity, stepped from her motor car.
+
+Katie had met her a few nights before at the dance. And Wayne knew her
+father--a man of many interests. It was his quarrel with the forest
+service that had brought her cousin Fred Wayneworth there. Fred was not
+one of his admirers.
+
+"Isn't this heat distressing?" was her greeting, though she had succeeded
+in keeping herself very fresh and sweet looking under the distress.
+
+As Katie turned to introduce the two girls she saw that Ann was pulling
+at her handkerchief nervously. Was it irritating to have people for whom
+hot days were but hot days call heat distressing?
+
+"Though one always has a breeze motoring," she took it up. "There are so
+many ways in which automobiles make life more bearable, don't you find it
+so, Miss Jones?"
+
+Katie replied, inanely--Ann was still pulling at her handkerchief--that
+they were indispensable, of course, though personally she was so fond of
+horses--.
+
+Yes, Miss Osborne loved horses too. Indeed it was army people had taught
+her to ride; once when she visited at Fort Riley--she had spent a month
+there with Mrs. Baxter. Katie knew her?
+
+Oh, yes, Katie knew her, and almost all the rest of the army people whom
+Miss Osborne told of adoring. Of a common world, they were not long
+strangers. They came together through a whole network of associations.
+Finally they reached South Carolina and concluded they must be
+related--something about Katie's grandmother and Miss Osborne's
+great-aunt--.
+
+Katie, in the midst of her interest turning instinctively to include
+Ann, was curiously arrested. Ann was sitting a little apart. And there
+seemed so poignant a significance in her sitting apart. It was an order
+of things from which she sat apart. The network went too far back, too
+deep down; it was too intricate for either sympathy or ingenuity to
+shape it at will.
+
+Though Katie tried. For Katie, enough that she was sitting apart, and
+consciously. Leaving grandmothers and great-aunts in a sadly unfinished
+state she was lightly off into a story of something which had once
+happened to her and Ann in Rome.
+
+But Ann was as an actor refusing to play her part. Perhaps she was too
+resentfully conscious of its being but a part--of her having no approach
+save through a part. For the first time she failed in that adaptability
+which had always made the stories plausible. In the midst of her tale
+Katie met Ann's eyes, and faltered. They were mocking eyes.
+
+As best she could she turned the conversation to local affairs, for Miss
+Osborne was looking curiously at Miss Jones' unresponsive friend.
+
+And as Ann for the first time seemed deliberately--yes, maliciously to
+fail--Katie for the first time felt out of patience, and injured. Perhaps
+the heat was enervating, but was that sufficient reason for embarrassing
+one's hostess? Perhaps it did make her think of hard things, but was that
+any reason for failing in the things that made all this possible? It was
+not appreciative, it was not kind, it did not show the right spirit,
+Katie told herself as she listened, with what she was pleased to consider
+both atoning and rebuking graciousness, to the plans for Miss Osborne's
+garden party.
+
+"It is for the working girls, especially the lower class of working
+girls, who are in the factories. For instance, the candy factory girls. I
+am especially interested in that as father owns the candy factory--it is
+a pet side issue of his. You can see it from here, across the river
+there on the little neck of land. You see? The girls are just beginning
+to come from work now."
+
+The three girls looked across the river, where groups of other girls were
+quitting a large building. They could be seen but dimly, but even at that
+distance something in the prevalent droop suggested that they, too, had
+found the day "distressingly warm."
+
+"I hadn't realized," said Katie, "that making candy was such serious
+business."
+
+"It couldn't have been very pleasant today," their guest granted, "but I
+believe it is regarded a very good place to work."
+
+The book Katie had been reading the night before had shown her the value
+of facts when it came to judging places where women worked, and she was
+moved to the blunt inquiry: "How much do those girls make?"
+
+"About six dollars a week, I believe," Miss Osborne replied.
+
+Katie watched them: the long dim line of girls engaged in preparation of
+the sweets of life. She was wondering what she would have thought it
+worth to go over there and work all day. "Then each of those girls made a
+dollar today?" she asked, and her inflection was curious.
+
+"Well--no," Miss Osborne confessed. "The experienced and the skillful
+made a dollar."
+
+"And how much," pressed Katie, "did the least experienced and
+skillful make?"
+
+"Fifty cents, I believe," replied Miss Osborne, seeming to have less
+enthusiasm when the scientific method was employed.
+
+There was a jarring sound. The girl "sitting apart" had pushed her chair
+still farther back. "You call that a good place to work?" She addressed
+it to Miss Osborne in voice that scraped as the chair had scraped.
+
+"Why yes, as places go, I believe so. Though that is why I am giving the
+garden party. They do need more pleasure in their lives. It is one of the
+under-lying principles of life--is it not?--that all must have their
+pleasures."
+
+Ann laughed recklessly. Miss Osborne looked puzzled; Katie worried.
+
+"And we are organizing this working girl's club. We think we can do a
+great deal through that."
+
+"Oh yes, help them get higher wages, I suppose?" Katie asked innocently.
+
+"N--o; that would scarcely be possible. But help them to get on better
+with what they have. Help them learn to manage better."
+
+Again Ann laughed, not only recklessly but rudely. "That is surely a
+splendid thing," she said, and the voice which said it was high-pitched
+and unsteady, "helping a girl to 'manage better' on fifty cents a day!"
+
+"You do not approve of these things?" Miss Osborne asked coldly.
+
+And with all the heat Katie felt herself growing suddenly cold as she
+heard Ann replying: "Oh, if they help you--pass the time, I don't
+suppose they do any harm."
+
+"You see," Katie hastened, "Miss Forrest and I were once associated with
+one of those things which wasn't very well conducted. I fear
+it--prejudiced us."
+
+"Evidently," was Miss Osborne's reply.
+
+"Though to be sure," Kate further propitiated, resentment at having to do
+so growing with the propitiation, "that is very narrow of us. I am sure
+your club will be quite different. We may come to the garden party?"
+
+Katie followed her guest to her car. "I am hoping it will be cooler
+soon," she said. "My friend is here to grow stronger, and this heat is
+quite unnerving her."
+
+Miss Osborne accepted it with polite, "I trust she will soon be much
+better. Yes, the heat is trying."
+
+Katie did not return to Ann, but sat at the head of the steps, looking
+across the river.
+
+She was genuinely offended. She knew nothing more unpardonable than to
+embarrass one's hostess. She grew hard in contemplation of it. Nothing
+justified it;--nothing.
+
+A few girls were still coming from the candy factory. Miss Osborne's car
+had crossed the bridge and was speeding toward her beautiful home up the
+river--just the home for a garden party. The last group of girls, going
+along very slowly, had to step back for the machine to rush by.
+
+Katie forgot her own grievance in wondering about those girls who had
+waited for the Osborne car to pass.
+
+She knew where Miss Osborne was going, where and how she lived; she was
+wondering where the girls not enjoying the breeze always to be found in
+motoring were going, what they would do when they got there, and what
+they thought of the efforts to help them "manage better" on their dollar
+or less a day.
+
+It made her rise and return to Ann.
+
+Ann, too, was looking across the river at the girls who had given Miss
+Osborne right of way. Two very red spots burned in Ann's cheeks and her
+eyes, also, were feverish.
+
+"I suppose I shouldn't have spoken that way to your friend," she began,
+but less contritely than defiantly.
+
+Katie flushed. She had been prepared to understand and be kind. But
+she was not equal to being scoffed at, she who had been so
+embarrassed--and betrayed.
+
+"It was certainly not very good form," she said coolly.
+
+"And of course that's all that matters," said Ann shrilly. "It's just
+good form that matters--not the truth."
+
+"Oh I don't see that you achieved any great thing for the truth, Ann.
+Anyhow, rudeness is no less rude when called truth."
+
+"Garden parties!" choked Ann.
+
+"I am not giving the garden party, Ann," said Katie long-sufferingly. "I
+was doing nothing more than being civil to a guest--against rather
+heavy odds."
+
+"You were pretending to think it was lovely. But of course that's
+good form!"
+
+Her perilously bright eyes had so much the look of an animal pushed into
+a corner that Katie changed. "Come, Ann dear, let's not quarrel with each
+other just because it has been a disagreeable day, or because Caroline
+Osborne may have a mistaken idea of doing good--and I a mistaken idea of
+being pleasant. I promised Worth a little spin on the river before
+dinner. You'll come? It will be cooling."
+
+"My head aches," said Ann, but the tension of her voice broke on a sob.
+"If you don't mind--I'll stay here." She looked up at her in a way which
+remotely suggested the look of that little dog the day before, "Katie, I
+don't mean you. When I say things like that--I don't mean _you_. I
+mean--I suppose I mean--the things back of you. All those things--"
+
+She stopped, but Katie did not speak. "You see," said Ann, "there are two
+worlds, and you and I are in different ones."
+
+"I don't believe in two worlds," said Katie promptly. "It's not a
+democratic view of things. It's all one world."
+
+"Your Miss Osborne and the fifty cents a day girls--all one world? I am
+afraid," laughed Ann tremulously, "that even the 'underlying principles
+of life' would have a hard time making _them_ one."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Even on the river it was not yet cool. Day had burned itself too deeply
+upon the earth for approaching night to hold messages for even its
+favorite messenger. Katie was herself at the steering wheel, and alone
+with Worth and Queen. She had learned to manage the boat, and much to the
+disappointment of Watts and the disapproval of Wayne sometimes went about
+on the river unattended. Katie contended that as a good swimmer and not a
+bad mechanic she was entitled to freedom in the matter. She held that to
+be taken about in a boat had no relation to taking a boat and going about
+in it; that when Watts went her soul stayed home.
+
+Tonight, especially, she would have the boat for what it meant to self;
+for to Katie, too, the sultry day had become more than sultry day. The
+thing which pressed upon her seemed less humidity than the consciousness
+of a world she did not know. It was not the heat which was fretting her
+so much as that growing sense of limitations in her thought and
+experience.
+
+She wondered what the man who mended the boats would say about Ann's
+two worlds.
+
+She suspected that he would agree with Ann, and then proceeded to work
+herself into a fine passion at his agreeing with Ann against her. "That
+silly thing of two worlds is fixed up by people who can't get along in
+the one world," said she. "And that childish idea of one world is clung
+to by people who don't know the real world," retorted the trouble-maker.
+
+To either side of the river were factories. Katie had never given much
+thought to factories beyond the thought that they disfigured the
+landscape. Now she wondered what the people who had spent that hot day in
+the unsightly buildings thought about the world in general--be it one
+world or two.
+
+Worth had come up to the front of the boat. The day had weighed upon him
+too, for he seemed a wistful little boy just then.
+
+She smiled at him lovingly. "What thinking about, Worthie dear?"
+
+"Oh, I wasn't thinking, Aunt Kate," he replied soberly. "I was just
+wondering."
+
+"You too?" she laughed.
+
+"And what would you say, Worthie," she asked after they had gone a little
+way in silence, "was the difference between thinking and wondering?"
+
+Worth maturely crossed his knees as a sign of the maturity of the
+subject. "Well, I don't know, 'cept when you think you know what you're
+thinking about, and when you wonder you just don't know anything."
+
+"Maybe you wonder when you don't know what to think," Katie suggested.
+
+"Yes, maybe so. There's more to wonder about than there is to think
+about, don't you think so, Aunt Kate?"
+
+"I wonder," she laughed.
+
+"You do wonder, don't you, Aunt Kate? You wonder more than you think."
+
+She flashed him a keen, queer look.
+
+"Worth," she asked, after another pause in which the mind of twenty-five
+and the mind of six were wondering in their respective fashions, "do you
+know anything about the underlying principles of life?"
+
+"The what, Aunt Kate?"
+
+"Underlying principles of life," she repeated grimly.
+
+"Why no," he acknowledged, "I guess I never heard of them."
+
+"I never did either, till just lately. I want to find out something about
+them. Do you know, Worthie dear, I'd go a long way to find out something
+about them."
+
+"Where would you have to go, Aunt Kate? Could you go in a boat?"
+
+"No, I fear you couldn't go in a boat. Trouble is," she murmured, more to
+herself than to him, "I don't know where you _would_ go."
+
+"Don't Papa know 'bout them?"
+
+"I sometimes think he would like to learn."
+
+"Papa knows all there is to know 'bout guns and powders," defended
+Worth loyally.
+
+"Yes, I know; but I don't believe guns and powders have any power to get
+you to these underlying principles of life."
+
+"Well, what _does_ get you there?" demanded her companion of the
+practical sex.
+
+She laughed. "I don't know, dear. I honestly don't know. And I'd like to
+know. Perhaps some time I will meet some one who is very wise, and then
+I'll ask whether it is experience, or wisdom, or sympathy. Whether some
+people are born to get there and other people not, or just how it is."
+
+"Watts says you have more sympathy than wisdom, Aunt Kate."
+
+"You mustn't talk about me to Watts," she admonished spiritedly. Then in
+the distance she heard a mocking voice insinuatingly inquiring: "But why
+not, if it's all one world?"
+
+"But he said," Worth added, "that it shouldn't be held against you,
+'cause of course you never had half a chance. No, it wasn't Watts said
+that, either. It was the man that mends the boats. It was Watts said you
+was a yard wide."
+
+Katie's head had gone up; she was looking straight ahead, cheeks red.
+"Indeed! So it's the man that mends the boats says these hateful things
+about me, is it?"
+
+"Why no, Aunt Kate; not hateful things. He says he's sorry for you. Why,
+he says he don't know anybody more to be pitied than you are."
+
+"Well--_really!_ I must say that of all the insolent
+--impertinent--insufferable--"
+
+"He says you would have amounted to something if you'd had half a chance.
+But he's afraid you never will, Aunt Kate."
+
+"I do not wish to hear anything more about him," said Aunt Kate
+haughtily. "Now, or at any future time."
+
+But it was not five minutes later she asked, with studied indifference:
+"Pray what does this absurd being look like?"
+
+"What being, Aunt Kate?" innocently inquired the being who was
+very young.
+
+"Why this sympathetic gentleman!"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. He's just a man. Sometimes he wears boots. He's real
+nice, Aunt Kate."
+
+"Oh I'm sure he must be charming!"
+
+She turned toward home, more erect, attending to her duties with a
+dignified sense of responsibility.
+
+The glare of day had gone, but without bringing the cool of night. It
+made the world seem very worn. Little by little resentment slipped away
+and she had joined the man who mended the boats in pitying herself. She
+was disposed to agree with him that she might have amounted to something
+had she had half a chance. No one else had ever thought of her amounting
+to anything--amounting, or not amounting. They had merely thought of her
+as Katie Jones. And certainly no one else had ever pitied her. It made
+the man who mended the boats seem a wise and tender being. As against the
+whole world she felt drawn to his large and kindly understanding.
+
+Excitement had suddenly seized Worth. "Aunt Kate--Aunt Kate!" he cried
+peremptorily, pointing to a cove in one of the islands they were passing,
+"please land there!"
+
+"Why no, Worth, we can't land. It's too hard. And why should we?"
+
+"Oh Aunt Kate--please! Oh please!"
+
+She was puzzled. "But why, Worthie?"
+
+"Cause I want you to. Don't you love me 't all any more, Aunt Kate?"
+
+That was too much. He was suddenly just a baby who had been made to
+suffer for her grown-up disturbances. "But, dearie, what will you do
+when we land?"
+
+"I want to look for something. I've got to get something. I want to show
+you something. 'Twon't take but a minute."
+
+"What do you want to show me, dear?"
+
+"Why I can't tell you, Aunt Kate. It's a surprise. It's a
+beautifulest surprise. Something I want to show you just because I
+love you, Aunt Kate."
+
+Katie's eyes brooded over him. "Dear little chappie, and Aunt Kate's a
+cross mean old thing, isn't she?"
+
+"Not if she'll stop the boat," said crafty Worth.
+
+She laughed and surveyed the shore. It looked feasible. "I'm very
+'easy,' Worth. Just don't get it into your head all the world is as
+easy as I am."
+
+The little boy and the dog were out before she had made her landing. They
+were running through the brush. "Worth," she called, "don't go far. Don't
+go out of sound."
+
+"No," he called back excitedly, "'tain't far."
+
+She was anxious, reproaching herself as absurd and rash, and was just
+attempting to ground the boat and follow when Queen came bounding back.
+Then came Worth's voice: "Here 'tis! Here's Aunt Kate--waiting for you!"
+
+Next there emerged from the brush a flushed and triumphant little boy,
+and after him came a somewhat less flushed and less obviously
+triumphant man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Her first emotion was fury at herself. She must be losing her mind not to
+have suspected!
+
+Then the fury overflowed on Worth and his companion. It reached
+high-water mark with the stranger's smile.
+
+And there dissolved; or rather, flowed into a savage interest, for the
+smile enticed her to mark what manner of man he was. And as she looked,
+the interest shed the savagery.
+
+His sleeves were rolled up; he had no hat, no coat. He had been working
+with something muddy. A young man, a large man, and strong. The first
+thing which she saw as distinctive was the way his smile lived on in
+his eyes after it had died on his lips, as if his thought was smiling
+at the smile.
+
+Even in that first outraged, panic-stricken moment Katie Jones knew she
+had never known a man like that.
+
+"Here he is, Aunt Kate!" cried her young nephew, dancing up and down.
+"This is him!"
+
+It was not a presentation calculated to set Katie at ease. She sought
+refuge in a frigid: "I beg pardon?"
+
+But that was quite lost on Worth. "Why, Aunt Kate, don't you know him?
+You said you'd rather see him than anybody now living! Don't you know,
+Aunt Kate--the man that mends the boats?"
+
+It seemed that in proclaiming their name for him Worth was shamelessly
+proclaiming it all: her conversations, the intimacy to which she had
+admitted him, her delight in him--yes, _need_ of him. "But I thought,"
+she murmured, as if in justification, "that you had a long white beard!"
+
+And so she had--at times; then there had been other times when he had no
+beard at all--but just such a chin.
+
+"I am sorry to be disappointing," the stranger replied--with his
+voice. With his eyes--it became clear even in that early moment that
+his eyes were insurgents--he said: "I don't take any stock in that
+long white beard!" Then, as if fearing his eyes had overstepped:
+"Perhaps you have visions of the future. A long white beard is a gift
+the years may bring me."
+
+"You can just ask him anything you want to, Aunt Kate," Worth was
+brightly assuring her. "I told him you wanted to know about the under
+life--the under what it is of life. You needn't be 'fraid of him, Aunt
+Kate; you know he's the man's so sorry for you. He knows all about
+everything, and will tell you just everything he knows."
+
+"Quite a sweeping commendation," Katie found herself murmuring
+foolishly--and in the imaginary conversations she had talked so
+brilliantly! But when one could not be brilliant one could always find
+cover under dignity. "If you will get in the boat now, Worth," she said,
+"we will go home."
+
+But Worth, serene in the consciousness of having accomplished his
+mission, was sending Queen out after sticks and did not appear to
+have heard.
+
+And suddenly, perhaps because the hot day had come to mean so much more
+than mere hot day, the feeling of being in a ridiculous position,
+together with that bristling sense of the need of a protective dignity,
+fell away. It became one of those rare moments when real things matter
+more than things which supposedly should matter. She looked at him to
+find him looking intently at her. He was not at all slipshod as
+inspector. "Why are you sorry for me?" she asked. "What is there about
+me to pity?"
+
+He smiled as he surveyed her, considering it. Even people for whom
+smiling was difficult must have smiled at the idea of pitying Katie
+Jones--Katie, who looked so much as if the world existed that she might
+have the world.
+
+But he looked with a different premise and saw a deeper thing. The world
+might exist for her enjoyment, but it eluded her understanding. And that
+was beginning to encroach upon the enjoyment.
+
+She seemed to follow, and her divination stirred a singular emotion,
+possibly a more turbulent emotion than Katie Jones had ever known.
+
+"It's all very well to pity me, but it's not a genuine pity--it's a
+jeering one. If you're going to pity me, why don't you do it sincerely
+instead of scoffingly? Is it my fault that I don't know anything about
+life? What chance did I ever have to know anything real? I wasn't
+educated. I was 'accomplished.' Oh, of course, if I had been a big
+person, a person with a real mind--if I had had anything exceptional
+about me--I would have stepped out. But I'm nothing but the most ordinary
+sort of girl. I haven't any talents. Nobody--myself included--can see any
+reason for my being any different from the people I'm associated with. I
+was brought up in the army. Army life isn't real life. It's army life. To
+an army man a girl is a girl, and what they mean by a girl has nothing to
+do with being a thinking being. Then what business has a man like you--I
+don't know who you are or what you're doing, but I believe you have some
+ideas about the real things of life--tell me, please--what business have
+you jeering at me?"
+
+"I have no business jeering at you," he said quickly, simply and
+strongly.
+
+But Katie had changed. He had a fancy that she would always be changing;
+that she was not one to rest in outlived emotions, that one mood was
+always but the making and enriching of another mood, moment ever flowing
+into moment, taking with it the heart of the moment that had gone. "You
+are quite right to pity me," she said, and tears surged beneath both eyes
+and voice. "Whether scoffingly or genuinely--you were quite right.
+Feeling just enough to feel there _is_ something--but not a big enough
+feeling to go to that something, knowing just enough to know I'm being
+cheated, but without either the courage or the knowledge to do anything
+about it--I'm surely a pitiable and laughable object. Come, Worth," she
+said sharply, "we're going home."
+
+But Worth had begun upon the construction of a raft, and was not in a
+home-going mood. Thus encouraged by his young friend the man who mended
+the boats sat down on a log.
+
+"When did you begin to want to know about the 'underlying principles of
+life'?" His smile quoted it, though less mockingly than tenderly.
+
+Katie was silent.
+
+"Was it the day _she_ came?" he asked quietly.
+
+She gasped. Was he--a wizard? But looking at him and seeing he looked
+very much more like a man than like anything else, she met him as man
+should be met. "The day who came? I don't know what you mean."
+
+"The girl. Was it the day you took her in? Saved her by making her
+save you?"
+
+She was too startled by that for pretense. She could only stare at him.
+
+"I saw her before you did," he said.
+
+She looked around apprehensively. The man who mended the boats knowing
+about Ann? Was the whole world losing its mind just because it had been
+such a hot day?
+
+But the world looking natural enough, she turned back to him. "I don't
+understand. Tell me, please."
+
+As he summoned it, he changed. She had an impression of all but the
+central thing falling away, leaving his spirit exposed. And a thought or
+a vision gripped that spirit, and he tightened under it as a muscle
+would tighten.
+
+When he turned to her, taking her in, self-consciousness fell away. There
+was no place for it.
+
+"You want to hear about it?" he asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"As a matter of fact, it's nothing, as facts go. Only an impression. Yet
+an impression that swore to facts. Perhaps you know that she came on the
+Island from the south bridge?"
+
+Katie shook her head. "I know nothing, save that suddenly she was there."
+
+That held him. "And knowing nothing, you took her in?"
+
+She kept silence, and he looked at her, dwelling upon it. "And you," he
+said softly, "don't know anything about the 'underlying principles of
+life'? Perhaps you don't. But if we had more you we'd have no her."
+
+She disclaimed it. "It wasn't that way--an understanding way. I didn't do
+it because I thought it should be done; because I wanted to--do good.
+I--oh, I don't know. I did it because I wanted to do it. I did it because
+I couldn't help doing it."
+
+That called to him. He seemed one for whom ideas were as doors, ever
+opening into new places. And he did not shut those doors, or turn from
+them, until he had looked as far as he could see.
+
+"Perhaps," he saw now, "that is the way it must come. Doing it because
+you can't help doing it. It seems wonderful enough to work the wonder."
+
+"Work what wonder?" Katie asked timidly.
+
+"The wonder of saving the world."
+
+He spoke it quietly, but passion, the passion of the visioner, leaped to
+his eyes at sound of what he had said.
+
+Katie looked about at so much of the world as her vision afforded:
+Prosperous factories--beautiful homes--hundreds of other homes less
+beautiful, but comfortable looking--some other very humble homes which
+yet looked habitable, the beautifully kept Government island in between
+the two cities, seeming to stand for something stable and unifying--far
+away hills and a distant sky line--a steamboat going through the splendid
+Government bridge, automobiles and carriages and farm wagons passing over
+that bridge--this man who mended the boats, this young man so live that
+thoughts of life could change him as a sculptor can change his clay--dear
+little Worth who was happily building a raft, the beautiful dog lying
+there drawing restoration from the breath of the water--"But it doesn't
+look as though it needed 'saving,'" said Katie.
+
+He shook his head. "You're looking at the framework. Her eyes that day
+brought word from the inside. To one knowing--"
+
+He broke off, looking at her as though seeing her from a new angle.
+
+He thought it aloud. "You've walked sunny paths, haven't you? You never
+had your soul twisted. Life never tried to wring you out of shape. And
+yet--oh there's quite a yet," he finished more lightly.
+
+"But you were telling me of Ann," Katie felt she must say.
+
+"Yes, and when I've finished telling you, you'll go back to your sunny
+paths, won't you? Please don't hurry me. I can tell it better if I think
+I'm not being hurried."
+
+She smiled openly. "I am in no hurry." There was a sunny rim trying all
+the while to pierce the somber thing which drew them together. Little
+rays from the sunny paths would dart daringly in to the dark place from
+which Ann rose.
+
+It made him wonder how far she of the sunny paths could penetrate an
+unlighted country. He looked at her--peered at her, fairly--trying to
+decide. But he could not decide. Katie baffled him on that.
+
+"I wonder," he voiced it, "where it's going to lead you? I wonder if
+you're prepared to go where it may lead you? Have you thought of that?
+Perhaps it's going to take you into a country too dark for you of the
+sunny paths. She may be called back. You know we are called back to
+countries where we have--established a residence. You might have to go
+with her to settle a claim, or break a tie, or pull some one else out
+that she might not be pulled back in. Then what? Perhaps you might feel
+you needed a guide. If so,"--he went boldly to the edge of it, then
+halted, and concluded with a boyishly bashful humor--"will you keep my
+application on file?"
+
+Katie was not going to miss her chance of finding out something. "I
+should want a guide who knew the territory," she said.
+
+"I qualify," he replied shortly, with a short, unmirthful laugh. "That is
+one advantage of not having spent one's days on sunny paths." His voice
+on that was neither bashful nor boyish.
+
+"But you must have spent some of them on sunny paths," she urged, with
+more feeling than she would have been able to account for. "You don't
+look," Katie added almost shyly, "as if you had grown in the dark."
+
+He did not reply. He looked so much older when sternness set his face,
+leaving no hint of that teasing gleam in his eyes, that pleasing little
+humorous twist of his mouth.
+
+Gently her voice went into the dark country claiming him then. "But you
+were telling me of my friend."
+
+It brought him out, wondering anew. "Your friend! There you go again! How
+can you expect me to stick to a subject when paths open out on all sides
+of you like that? But I'll try to quit straying. It happened that on that
+day, just at that time, I was going under the south bridge. I chanced to
+look up. A face was bending down. Her face. Our eyes met--square. I _got_
+it--flung to me in that one look. What the world had done to her--what
+she thought of it for doing it--what she meant to do about it.
+
+"I wish," he went on, with a slow, heavy calm, "that the 'good' men and
+women of the world--those 'good' men and women who eat good dinners and
+sleep in good beds--some of the 'God's in heaven all's well with the
+world' people--could have that look wake them up in the middle of the
+night. I'd like to think of them turning to the wall and trying to shut
+it out--and the harder they tried the nearer and clearer it grew. I'd
+like to think of them sitting up in bed praying God--the God of 'good'
+folks--to please make it stop. I'd like to have it haunt them--dog
+them--finally pierce their brains or souls or whatever it is they have,
+and begin to burrow. I'd like to have it right there on the job every
+time they mentioned the goodness of God or the justice of man, till
+finally they threw up their hands in crazed despair with, 'For God's
+sake, what do you want _me_ to do about it!'"
+
+He had scarcely raised his voice. He was smiling at her. It was the smile
+led her to gasp: "Why I believe you hate us!"
+
+"Why I really believe I do," he replied quietly, still smiling.
+
+Suddenly she flared. "That's not the thing! You're not going to set the
+world right by hating the world. You're not going to make it right for
+some people by hating other people. What good thing can come of hate?"
+
+"The greatest things have come of hate. Of a divine hate that
+transcends love."
+
+"Why no they haven't! The greatest things have come of love. What the
+world needs is more love. You can't bring love by hating."
+
+He seemed about to make heated reply, but smiled, or rather his smile
+became really a smile as he said: "What a lot of things you and I would
+find to talk about."
+
+"We must--" Katie began impetuously, but halted and flushed. "We must go
+on with our story," was what it came to.
+
+"I haven't any story, except just the story of that look. Though it holds
+the story of love and hate and a hundred other things you and I would
+disagree about. And I don't know that I can convey to you--you of the
+sunny paths--what the look conveyed to me. But imagine a crowd, a crazed
+crowd, all pushing to the center, and then in the center a face thrown
+back so you can see it for just an instant before it sinks to
+suffocation. If you can fancy that look--the last gasp for breath of one
+caught--squeezed--just going down--a hatred of the crowd that got her
+there, just to suffocate her--and perhaps one last wild look at the hills
+out beyond the crowd. If you can get _that_--that fear, suffocation,
+terror--and don't forget the hate--yet like the dog you've kicked that
+grieved--'How could you--when it was a pat I wanted!'--"
+
+"I know it in the dog language," said Katie quiveringly.
+
+"Then imagine the dog crazed with thirst tied just out of reach of a
+leaping, dancing brook--"
+
+"Oh--please. That's too plain."
+
+"It hurts when applied to dogs, does it?" he asked roughly.
+
+"But they're so helpless--and they love us so!"
+
+"And _they're_ so helpless--and they hate because they weren't let love."
+
+"But surely there aren't many--such looks. Not many who feel
+they're--going down. Why such things couldn't _be_--in this
+beautiful world."
+
+"Such," he said smilingly, "has ever been the philosophy of sunny paths."
+
+"You needn't talk to me like that!" she retorted angrily. "I guess I saw
+the look as well as you did--and did a little more to banish it than you
+did, too."
+
+"True. I was just coming to that thing of my not having done anything.
+Perhaps it was a case of fools rushing in where angels feared to
+tread. You mustn't mind being called a fool in any sentence so
+preposterous as to call me an angel. You see one who had never been in
+the crowd would say--'Why don't you get out?' It would be droll,
+wouldn't it, to have some one on a far hill call--'But why don't you
+come over here?' Don't you see how that must appeal to the sense of
+humor of the one about to go down?"
+
+She made no reply. The thing that hurt her was that he seemed to enjoy
+hurting her.
+
+"You see I've been in the crowd," he said more simply and less bitterly.
+"I don't suppose men who have been most burned to death ever say--'The
+fire can't hurt you.'"
+
+"And do they never try to rescue others from fires?" asked Katie
+scornfully. "Do they let them burn--just because they know fire for a
+dangerous thing?"
+
+"Rescue them for what? More fires? It's a question whether it's very
+sane, or so very humane, either, to rescue a man from one fire just to
+have him on hand for another."
+
+"I don't think I ever in my life heard anything more farfetched,"
+pronounced Katie. "How do you know there'll be another?"
+
+"Because there are people for whom there's nothing else. If you can't
+offer a safe place, why rescue at all? Though it's true," he laughed,
+"that I hadn't the courage of my convictions in the matter. After that
+look--oh I haven't been able to make it live--burn--as it did--she passed
+on the Island, the guard evidently thinking she was with some people who
+had just got out of an automobile and gone on for a walk. And suddenly I
+was corrupted, driven by that impulse for saving life, that beautiful
+passion for keeping things alive to suffer which is so humorously
+grounded in the human race."
+
+He stopped with a little laugh. Watching him, Katie was thinking one need
+have small fear of his not always being "corrupted." There was a light in
+his eyes spoke for "corruption."
+
+"I saw her making straight across the Island," he went back to his story.
+"I _knew_. And I knew that on the other side she might find things very
+conveniently arranged for her purpose. I turned the boat and went at its
+best speed around the head of the Island. Hugged the shore on your side.
+Pulled into a little cove. Waited."
+
+He looked at Katie, comparing her with an _a priori_ idea of her. "I saw
+you sitting up there in the sun--on the bunker. Just having received the
+last will and testament, as it were, of this other human soul, can't you
+fancy how I hated you--sitting there so serenely in the sun?"
+
+"But why hate me?" she demanded passionately. "That's where you're small
+and unjust! I don't make the crazed crowds, do I?"
+
+"Yes; that's just what you do. There'd be no crowds if it weren't for
+you. You take up too much room."
+
+"I don't see why you want to--hurt me like that," she said unevenly.
+"Don't you want me to enjoy my place any more? Will it do any good for me
+to get in the crowd? What can I do about it?"
+
+Looking into her passionately earnest face it was perhaps the gulf
+between the girl and his _a priori_ idea of her brought the smile--a
+smile no kin to that hard smile of his. And looking with a different
+slant across the gulf there was a sort of affectionate roguery in his
+eyes as he asked: "Do you want to know what I honestly think about you?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I think you're in for it!"
+
+"In for what?"
+
+"I don't think you've the ghost of a chance to escape!" he gloated.
+
+"Escape--what?"
+
+"Seeing. And when you do--!" He laughed--that laugh one thinks of as the
+exclusive possession of an affectionate understanding. And when it died
+to a smile, something tenderly teasing flickered in that smile.
+
+She flushed under it. "You were telling me--we keep stopping."
+
+"Yes, don't we? I wonder if we always would."
+
+"We keep stopping to quarrel."
+
+"Yes--to quarrel. I wonder if we always would."
+
+"I haven't a doubt of it in the world," said Katie feelingly, and they
+laughed together as friends laugh together.
+
+"Well, where did I leave myself? Oh yes--waiting. Sitting there busily
+engaged in hating you. Then she came across the grass--making straight
+for the river--running. I saw that you saw, and the thing that mattered
+to me then was what you would do about it. Saved or not saved, she was
+gone--I thought. The crowd had squeezed it all out of her. The live thing
+to me was what you--the You of the world that you became to me--would do
+about her."
+
+He paused, smiling at that absurd and noble vision of Katie tumbling down
+the bunker. "And when you did what you did do--it was so treacherously
+disarming, the quick-witted humanity, the clever tenderness of it--I
+loved you so for it that I just couldn't go on hating. There's where
+you're a dangerous person. How dare you--standing for the You of the
+world--dampen the splendid ardor of my hate?"
+
+Katie did not let pass her chance. "Perhaps if the Me of the world were
+known a little more intimately it would be less hated."
+
+He shook his head. "They just happened to have you. They can't keep you."
+
+There was another one of those pauses which drew them so much closer
+than the words. She knew what he was wondering, and he knew that she
+knew. At length she colored a little and called him back to the greater
+reserve of words.
+
+"I saw how royally you put it through. I could see you standing there on
+the porch, looking back to the river. I've wanted several things rather
+badly in my life, but I doubt if I've ever wanted anything much worse
+than to know what you were saying. And then with my own two eyes I saw
+the miracle: Saw her--the girl who had just had all the concentrated
+passion of the Her of the world--turn and follow you into the house. It
+was a blow to me! Oh 'twas an awful blow."
+
+"Why a blow?"
+
+"In the first place that you should want to, and then that you should
+be able to. My philosophy gives you of the sunny paths no such desire
+nor power."
+
+"Showing," she deduced quickly and firmly, "that your philosophy is
+all wrong."
+
+"Oh no; showing that the much toasted Miss Katherine Jones is too big for
+mere sunny paths. Showing that she has a latent ambition to climb a
+mountain in a storm."
+
+Fleetingly she wondered how he should know her for the much toasted Miss
+Katherine Jones, but in the center of her consciousness rose that
+alluring picture of climbing a mountain in a storm.
+
+"Tell me how you did it."
+
+"Why--I don't know. I had no method. I told her I needed her."
+
+"_You_--needed _her_?"
+
+"And afterwards, in a different way, I told her that again. And I
+did. I do."
+
+"Why do you need her? How do you need her?" he urged gently.
+
+She hesitated. Her mouth--her splendid mouth shaped by stern or tender
+thinking to lines of exquisite fineness or firmness--trembled slightly,
+and the eyes which turned seriously upon him were wistful. "Perhaps,"
+said Katie, "that even on sunny paths one guesses that there are such
+things as storms in the mountains."
+
+It was only his eyes which answered, but the fullness of the response
+ushered them into a silence in which they rested together
+understandingly.
+
+"I sat there watching the house," he went back to it after the moment. "I
+was sure the girl would come out again. 'She'll bungle it,' I said to
+myself. 'She'll never be able to put it through.' But time passed--and
+she did not come out!"--inconsistently enough that came with a ring of
+triumph. "And then the next day--after the wonder had grown and grown--I
+saw her driving with you. I was just off the head of the Island. She was
+turned toward me, looking up the river. Again I saw her eyes, and in them
+that time I read _you_. And I don't believe," he concluded with a little
+laugh, "that my stock of hate can ever be quite so secure again."
+
+They talked on, not conscious that it was growing late. Time and place,
+and the conventions of time and place, seemed outside. She let him in
+quite freely: to that edge of fun and excitement as well as to the
+strange and somber places. It was fun sharing fun with him; and something
+in his way of receiving it suggested that he had been in need of sharing
+some one's fun. He had a way of looking at her when she laughed that had
+vague suggestion of something not far from gratitude.
+
+But the fun light, and that other light which seemed wanting to thank
+her for something, went from his eyes, leaving a glimmer of something
+deeper as he asked: "But you've never asked for her story? You've
+demanded nothing?"
+
+"Why no," said Katie; "only that I should be proud if she ever felt I
+could help."
+
+He turned his face a little away. One looking into it then would not have
+given much for his stock of hate.
+
+Worth had approached. "Ain't you getting awful hungry, Aunt Kate?"
+
+It recalled her, and to embarrassment. "We must go at once," she
+said, confused.
+
+"Did you find out all you wanted to know from him, Aunt Kate?" he asked,
+getting in the boat.
+
+She transcended her embarrassment. "No, Worth. Only that there is a very
+great deal I would like to know."
+
+He was standing ready to push her boat away. She did not give the word.
+As she looked at him she had a fancy that she was leaving him in a lonely
+place--she who was going back to what he called the sunny paths. And not
+only did she feel that he was lonely, but she felt curiously lonely
+herself, sitting there waiting to tell him to push her away. She wanted
+to say, "Come and see me," but she was too bound by the things to which
+she was returning to put it in the language of those things. And so she
+said, and the new shyness brought its own sweetness:
+
+"You tell me to come to you if I need a guide. Thank you for that. I
+shall remember. And perhaps sunshine is a thing that soaks in and can be
+stored up, and given out again. If it ever seems I can be of any use--in
+any way--will you come where you know you can find me?"
+
+Her eyes fell before the things which had leaped to his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Two hours later she found herself alone on the porch with Captain
+Prescott.
+
+A good deal had happened in the meantime.
+
+Mrs. Prescott had arrived during Katie's absence, a stop-over of two
+weeks having been shortened to two hours because of the illness of her
+friend. Her room at her son's quarters being uninhabitable because of
+fresh paint, Wayne had insisted she come to them, and she was even then
+resting up in Ann's room, or rather the room which had been put at her
+disposal, a bed having been arranged for Ann in Katie's room. Had Katie
+been at home she would have planned it some other way, for above all
+things she did not want it to occur to Ann that she was in the way. But
+Katie had been very busy talking to the man who mended the boats, and
+naturally it would not occur to Wayne that Ann would be at all sensitive
+about giving up her room for a few days to accommodate a dear old friend
+of theirs. And perhaps she was not sensitive about it, only this was no
+time, Katie felt, to make Ann feel she was crowding any one.
+
+And in Katie's absence "Pet" had been shot. Pet had not seemed to realize
+that alley methods of defense were not in good repute in the army. He
+could not believe that Pourquoi and N'est-ce-pas had no guile in their
+hearts when they pawed at him. Furthermore, he seemed to have a
+prejudice against enlisted men and showed his teeth at several of them.
+Katie began to explain that that was because--but Wayne had curtly cut
+her short with saying that he didn't care why it was, the fact that it
+was had made it impossible to have the dog around. If one of the men had
+been bitten by the contemptible cur Katie couldn't cauterize the wound
+with the story of the dog's hard life.
+
+The only bright spot she could find in it was that probably Watts had
+taken a great deal of pleasure in executing Wayne's orders--and Caroline
+Osborne said that all needed pleasure.
+
+She saw that Ann's hands were clenched, and so had not pursued the
+discussion.
+
+Katie was not in high favor with her brother that night. He said it was
+outrageous she should not have been there to receive Mrs. Prescott. When
+Katie demurred that she would have been less outrageous had she had the
+slightest notion Mrs. Prescott would be there to be received, it
+developed that Wayne was further irritated because he had come to take
+Ann out for a boat ride--and Katie had gone in the boat--heaven only knew
+where! Then when Katie sought to demolish that irritation with the
+suggestion that just then was the most beautiful time of day for the
+river--and she knew it would do Ann good to go--Wayne clung manfully to
+his grievance, this time labeling it worry. He forbade Katie's going any
+more by herself. It was preposterous she should have stayed so long. He
+would have been out looking for her had it not been that Watts had been
+able to get a glimpse of the boat pulled in on the upper island.
+
+Katie wondered what else Watts had been able to get a glimpse of.
+
+Wayne was so bent on being abused (hot days affected people differently)
+that the only way she could get him to relinquish a grievance for a
+pleasure was to put it in the form of a duty. Ann needed a ride on the
+river, Katie affirmed, and so they had gone, Wayne doing his best to
+cover his pleasure.
+
+"Men never really grow up," she mused to Wayne's back. "Every so often
+they have to act just like little boys. Only little boys aren't half so
+apt to do it."
+
+Though perhaps Wayne had been downright disappointed at not having the
+boat for Ann when he came home. Was he meaning to deliver that lecture on
+the army? She hoped that whatever he talked about it would bring Ann home
+without that strained, harassed look.
+
+And now Katie was talking to Captain Prescott and thinking of the man who
+mended the boats. Captain Prescott was a good one to be talking to when
+one wished to be thinking of some one else. He called one to no dim,
+receding distances.
+
+She was thinking that in everything save the things which counted most
+he was not unlike this other man--name unknown. Both were well-built,
+young, vigorous, attractive. But life had dealt differently with them,
+and they were dealing differently with life. That made a difference big
+as life itself.
+
+From the far country in which she was dreaming she heard Captain
+Prescott talking about girls. He was talking sentimentally, but even his
+sentiment opened no vistas.
+
+And suddenly she remembered how she had at one time thought it possible
+she would marry him. The remembrance appalled her; less in the idea of
+marrying him than in the consciousness of how far she had gone from the
+place where marrying him suggested itself to her at all.
+
+Life had become different. This showed her how vastly different.
+
+But as he talked on she began to feel that it had not become as different
+to him as to her. He had not been making little excursions up and down
+unknown paths. He had remained right in his place. That place seemed to
+him the place for Katie Jones.
+
+As he talked on--about what he called Life--sublimely unconscious of the
+fences all around him shutting out all view of what was really life--it
+became unmistakable that Captain Prescott was getting ready to propose
+to her. She had had too much experience with the symptoms not to
+recognize them.
+
+Katie did not want to be proposed to. She was in no mood for dealing
+with a proposal. She had too many other things to be thinking of,
+wondering about.
+
+But she reprimanded herself for selfishness. It meant something to him,
+whether it did to her or not. She must be kind--as kind as she could.
+
+The kindest thing she could think of was to keep him from proposing. To
+that end she answered every sentimental remark with a flippant one.
+
+It grieved, but did not restrain him. "I had thought you would understand
+better, Katie," he said.
+
+Something in his voice made her question the kindness of her method.
+Better decline a love than laugh at it.
+
+He talked on of how he had, at various times, cared--in a way, he
+said--for various girls, but had never found the thing he knew was fated
+to mean the real thing to him; Katie had heard it all before, and always
+told with that same freedom from suspicion of its ever having been said
+before. But perhaps it was the very fact that it was familiar made her
+listen with a certain tenderness. For she seemed to be listening, less to
+him than to the voice of by-gone days--all those merry, unthinking days
+which in truth had dealt very kindly and generously with her.
+
+She had a sense of leaving them behind. That alone was enough to make her
+feel tenderly toward them. Even a place within a high-board fence,
+intolerable if one thought one were to remain in it, became a kindly and
+a pleasant spot from the top of the fence. Once free to turn one's face
+to the wide sweep without, one was quite ready to cast loving looks back
+at the enclosure.
+
+And so she softened, prepared to deal tenderly with Captain Prescott,
+as he seemed then, less the individual than the incarnation of
+outlived days.
+
+It was into that mellowed, sweetly melancholy mood he sent the
+following:
+
+"And so, Katie, I wanted to talk to you about it. You're such a good
+pal--such a bully sort--I wanted to tell you that I care for Ann--and
+want to marry her."
+
+She dropped from the high-board fence with a jolt that well-nigh knocked
+her senseless.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "that you must have suspected."
+
+"Well, not exactly suspected," said Katie, feeling her bumps, as it were.
+
+Her first emotion was that it was pretty shabby treatment to accord one
+who was at such pains to be kind. It gave one a distinctly injured
+feeling--getting all sweet and mellow only to be dashed to the ground and
+let lie there in that foolish looking--certainly foolish feeling heap!
+
+But as soon as she had picked herself up--and Katie was too gamey to be
+long in picking herself up--she wondered what under heaven she was going
+to do about things! What had she let herself in for now! The pains of an
+injured dignity--throb of a pricked self love--were forgotten in this
+real problem, confronting her. She even grew too grave to think about how
+funny it was.
+
+For Katie saw this as genuinely serious.
+
+"Harry," she asked, "have you said anything to your mother?"
+
+"Well, not _said_ anything," he laughed.
+
+"But she knows?"
+
+"Mother's keen," he replied.
+
+"I once thought I was," was Katie's unspoken comment.
+
+"And have you--you are so good as to confide in me, so I presume to ask
+questions--have you said anything to Ann?"
+
+"No, not _said_ anything," he laughed again.
+
+"But _she_ knows?"
+
+"I don't know. I wondered if you did."
+
+"No," said Katie, "I don't. Truth is I've been so wrapped up in my own
+affairs--some things I've had on my mind--that I haven't been thinking
+about people around me falling in love."
+
+"People are always falling in love," he remarked sentimentally. "One
+should always be prepared for that."
+
+"So it seems," replied Katie. "And yet one is not always--entirely
+prepared."
+
+She had picked herself up from her fall, but she was not yet able to walk
+very well. Fortunately he was too absorbed in his own happy striding to
+mark her hobbling.
+
+A young man talking of his love does not need a brilliant
+conversationalist for companion.
+
+And he was a young man in love--that grew plain. Had Katie ever seen such
+eyes? And as for the mouth--though perhaps most remarkable of all was the
+voice. Just what did it make Katie think of? He enumerated various things
+it made him think of, only to express his dissatisfaction with them all
+as inadequate. Had Katie ever seen any one so beautiful? And with such
+an adorable shy little way? Had Katie ever heard her say anything about
+him? Did she think he had any chance? Was there any other fellow? Of
+course there must have been lots of other fellows in love with her--a
+girl like that--but had she cared for any of them? Would Katie tell him
+something about her? She had been reserved about herself--the kind of
+reserve a fellow wouldn't try to break through. Would Katie tell him of
+her life and her people? Not that it made any difference with him--oh, he
+wanted just her. But his mother would want to know--Katie knew how
+mothers were about things like that. And he did want his mother to like
+her. Surely she would. How could she help it?
+
+She wondered if Ann knew him for a young man in love. Katie's heart
+hardened against Ann at the possibility. That would not be playing a fair
+game. Ann was not in position to let Katie's friends fall in love with
+her. Katie had not counted on that.
+
+"Have you any reason," she asked, "to think Ann cares for you?"
+
+He laughed happily. "N--o; only I don't think it displeases her to have
+me say nice things to her." And again he laughed.
+
+Then Ann had encouraged him. A girl had no business to encourage a man to
+say nice things to her when she knew nothing could come of it.
+
+But Katie's memory there nudged Katie's primness; memory of all the
+men who had been encouraged to say nice things to Katie Jones, even
+when it was not desirable--or perhaps even possible--that anything
+could "come of it."
+
+But of course that was different. Ann was in no position to permit nice
+things being said to her.
+
+"Katie," he was asking, "where did you first meet her? How did you come
+to know her? Can't you tell me all about it?"
+
+There came a mad impulse to do so. To say: "I first met her right down
+there at the edge of the water. She was about to commit suicide. I don't
+know why. I think she was one of those 'Don't You Care' girls you admired
+in 'Daisey-Maisey.' But I'm not sure of even that. I didn't want her to
+kill herself, so I took her in and pretended she was a friend of mine. I
+made the whole thing up. I even made up her name. She said her name was
+Verna Woods, but I think that's a made-up name, too. I haven't the
+glimmering of an idea what her real name is, who her people are, where
+she came from, or why she wanted to kill herself."
+
+Then what?
+
+First, bitter reproaches for Katie. She would be painted as having
+violated all the canons.
+
+For the first time, watching her friend's face softened by his dreams,
+seeing him as his mother's son, she questioned her right to violate them.
+She did not know why she had not thought more about it before. It had
+seemed such a _joke_ on the people in the enclosure. But it was not going
+to be a joke to hurt them. Was that what came of violating the canons?
+Was the hurt to one's friends the punishment one got for it?
+
+"You can't cauterize the wounds with the story of the dog's hard life,"
+Wayne had said of poor little unpetted--and because unpetted,
+unpettable--Pet.
+
+Was Watts the real philosopher when he said "things was as they was"?
+
+She was bewildered. She was in a country where she could not find her
+way. She needed a guide. Her throat grew tight, her eyes hot, at thought
+of how badly she needed her guide.
+
+Then, perhaps in self-defense, she saw her friend Captain Prescott, not
+as a victim of the violation of canons, but as a violator of them
+himself. She turned from Ann's past to his.
+
+"Harry," she asked, in rather metallic voice, "how about that affair of
+yours down in Cuba?"
+
+He flushed with surprise and resentment. "I must say, Katie," he said
+stiffly, "I don't see what it has to do with this."
+
+"Why, I should think it might have something to do with it. Isn't there a
+popular notion that our pasts have something to do with our futures?"
+
+"It's all over," he said shortly.
+
+"Then you would say, Harry, that when things are over they're over. That
+they needn't tie up the future."
+
+"Certainly not," said he, making it clear that he wanted that phase of
+the conversation "over."
+
+"It's my own theory," said Katie. "But I didn't know whether or not it
+was yours. Now if I had had a past, and it was, as you say yours is,
+all over, I shouldn't think it was any man's business to go poking
+around in it."
+
+"That," he said, "is a different matter."
+
+"What's a different matter?" she asked aggressively.
+
+"A woman's past. That would be a man's business."
+
+"Though a man's past is not a woman's business?"
+
+"Oh, we certainly needn't argue that old nonsense. You're too much the
+girl of the world to take any such absurd position, Katie."
+
+"Of course, being what you call a 'girl of the world' it's absurd I
+should question the man's point of view, but I can't quite get the logic
+of it. You wouldn't marry a woman with a past, and yet the woman who
+marries you is marrying a man with one."
+
+"I've lived a man's life," he said. And he said it with a certain pride.
+
+"And perhaps she's lived a woman's life," Katie was thinking. Only the
+woman was not entitled to the pride. For her it led toward
+self-destruction rather than self-approval.
+
+"It's this way, Katie," he explained to her. "This is the difference. A
+woman's past doesn't stay in the past. It marks her. Why I can tell a
+woman with a past every time," he concluded confidently.
+
+Katie sat there smiling at him. The smile puzzled him.
+
+"Now look here, Katie, surely you--a girl of the world--the good
+sort--aren't going to be so melodramatic as to dig up a 'past' for
+me, are you?"
+
+"No," said Katie, "I don't want to be melodramatic. I'll try to dig up
+no pasts."
+
+His talk ran on, and her thoughts. It seemed so cruel a thing that Ann's
+past--whatever it might be, and surely nothing short of a "past" could
+make a girl want to kill herself--should rise up and damn her now. To him
+she was a dear lovely girl--the sort of a girl a man would want to marry.
+Very well then, intrinsically, she _was_ that. Why not let people _be_
+what they were? Why not let them be themselves, instead of what one
+thought they would be from what one knew of their lives? It was so easy
+to see marks when one knew of things which one's philosophy held would
+leave marks. It seemed a fairer and a saner thing to let human beings be
+what their experiences had actually made them rather than what one
+thought those experiences would make them.
+
+Captain Prescott had blighted a Cuban woman's life--for his own pleasure
+and vanity. With Ann it may have been the press of necessity, or it may
+have been--the call of life. Either one, being driven by life, or drawn
+to it, seemed less ignominious than trifling with life.
+
+Why would it be so much worse for Captain Prescott to marry Ann than it
+would be for Ann to marry Captain Prescott?
+
+The man who mended the boats would back her up in that!
+
+Through her somber perplexity there suddenly darted the sportive idea of
+getting Ann in the army! The audacious little imp of an idea peeped
+around corners in Katie's consciousness and tried to coquet with her.
+Banished, it came scampering back to whisper that Ann would not bring the
+army its first "past"--either masculine or feminine. Only in the army
+they managed things in such wise that there was no need of committing
+suicide. Ann had been a bad manager.
+
+But at that moment they were joined by Captain Prescott's mother and he
+retired for a solitary smoke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Mrs. Prescott made vivid and compelling those days, those things, which
+Katie had a little while before had the fancy of so easily slipping away
+from. She made them things which wove themselves around one, or rather,
+things of which one seemed an organic part, from which one could no more
+pull away than the tree's branch could pull away from the tree's trunk.
+
+In her presence Katie was claimed by those things out of which she had
+grown, claimed so subtly that it seemed a thing outside volition. Mrs.
+Prescott did not, in any form, say things were as they were; it was only
+that she breathed it.
+
+How could one combat with words, or in action, that rooted so much deeper
+than mere words or action?
+
+She was a slight and simple looking lady to be doing anything so large as
+stemming the tide of a revolutionary impulse. She had never lost the
+girlishness of her figure--or of her hands. So much had youth left her.
+Her face was thin and pale, and of the contour vaguely called
+aristocratic. It was perhaps the iron gray hair rolling back from the
+pale face held the suggestion of austerity. But that which best expressed
+her was the poise of her head. She carried it as if she had a right to
+carry it that way.
+
+It was of small things she talked: the people she had met, people they
+knew whom Katie knew. It was that net-work of small things she wove
+around Katie. One might meet a large thing in a large way. But that
+subtle tissue of the little things!
+
+They talked of Katie's mother, and as they talked it came to Katie that
+perhaps the most live things of all might be the dead things. Katie's
+mother had not been unlike Mrs. Prescott, save that to Katie, at least,
+she seemed softer and sweeter. They had been girls together in
+Charleston. They had lived on the same street, gone to the same school,
+come out at the same party, and Katie's mother had met Katie's father
+when he came to be best man at Mrs. Prescott's wedding. Then they had
+been stationed together at a frontier post in a time of danger. Wayne had
+been born at that post. They had been together in times of birth and
+times of death.
+
+Mrs. Prescott spoke of Worth, and of how happy she knew Katie was to have
+him with her. She talked of the responsibility it brought Katie, and as
+they talked it did seem responsibility, and responsibility was another
+thing which stole subtly up around her, chaining her with intangible--and
+because intangible, unbreakable--chains.
+
+Mrs. Prescott wanted to know about Wayne. Was he happy, or had the
+unhappiness of his marriage gone too deep? "Your dear mother grieved so
+about it, Katie," she said. "She saw how it was going. It hurt her."
+
+"Yes," said Katie, "I know. It made mother very sad."
+
+"I am glad that her death came before the separation."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Katie; "I think mother would have been glad."
+
+"She did not believe in divorce; your mother and I, Katie, were the
+old-fashioned kind of churchwomen."
+
+"Neither did mother believe in unhappiness," said Katie, and drew a
+longer breath for saying it, for it was as if the things claiming her had
+crowded up around her throat.
+
+Mrs. Prescott sighed. "We cannot understand those things. It is a strange
+age in which we are living, Katie. I sometimes think that our only hope
+is to trust God a little more."
+
+"Or help man a little more," said Katie.
+
+"Perhaps," said Mrs. Prescott gently, "that giving more trust to God
+would be giving more help to man."
+
+"I'm not sure I get the connecting link," said Katie, more sure of
+herself now that it had become articulate.
+
+Mrs. Prescott put one of her fine hands over upon Katie's. "Why, child,
+you can't mean that. That would have hurt your mother."
+
+For the moment Katie did not speak. "If mother had understood just what I
+meant--understood all about it--I don't believe it would." A second time
+she was silent, as it struggled. "And if it had"--she spoke it as a thing
+not to be lightly spoken--"I should be very deeply sorry, but I would
+not be able to help it."
+
+"Why, child!" murmured her mother's friend. "You're talking strangely.
+You--the devoted daughter you always were--not able to 'help' hurting
+your mother?"
+
+Katie's eyes filled. It had become so real: the things stealing around
+her, the thing in her which must push them back, that it was as if she
+were hurting her mother, and suffering in the consciousness of bringing
+suffering. Memory, the tenderest of memories, was another thing weaving
+itself around her, clinging to her heart, claiming her.
+
+But suddenly she leaned forward. "Would I be able to _help_ being
+myself?" she asked passionately.
+
+Mrs. Prescott seemed startled. "I fear," she said, perplexed by the tears
+in Katie's eyes and the stern line of her mouth, "that we are speaking of
+things I do not understand."
+
+Katie was silent, agreeing with her.
+
+Mrs. Prescott broke the silence. "The world is changing."
+
+And again agreeing, Katie saw that in those changes friends bound
+together by dear ties might be driven far apart.
+
+"Katie," she asked after a moment, "tell me of my boy and your friend."
+There was a wistful, almost tremulous note in her voice. "You have
+sympathy and intelligence, Katie. You must know what a time like this
+means to a mother."
+
+Katie could not speak. It seemed she could bear little more that night.
+And she longed for time to think it out, know where she stood, come to
+some terms with herself.
+
+But forced to face it, she tried to do so lightly. She thought it just
+a fancy of Harry's. Wasn't he quite given to falling in love with
+pretty girls?
+
+His mother shook her head. "He cares for her. I know. And do you not see,
+Katie, that that makes her about the biggest thing in life to me?"
+
+Katie's heart almost stood still. She was staggered. Through her
+wretchedness surged a momentary yearning to be one of those people--oh,
+one of those _safe_ people--who never found the peep-holes in their
+enclosure!
+
+"Tell me of her, Katie," urged her mother's friend. "Harry seems to think
+she means much to you. Just what is it she means to you?"
+
+For the moment she was desperate in her wondering how to tell it. And
+then it happened that from her frenzied wondering what to say of it she
+sank into the deeper wondering what it _was_. What it was--what in truth
+it had been all the time--Ann meant to her.
+
+Why had she done it? What was that thing less fleeting than fancy, more
+imperative than sympathy, made Ann mean more than things which had all
+her life meant most?
+
+Watching Katie, Mrs. Prescott wavered between gratification and
+apprehension: pleased that that light in Katie's eyes, a finer light than
+she had ever known there before, should come through thought of this
+girl for whom Harry cared; troubled by the strangeness and the sternness
+of Katie's face.
+
+It was Katie herself Mrs. Prescott wanted--had always wanted. She had
+always hoped it would be that way, not only because she loved Katie, but
+because it seemed so as it should be. She believed that summer would have
+brought it about had it not been for this other girl--this stranger.
+
+Katie's embarrassment had fallen from her, pushed away by feeling. She
+was scarcely conscious of Mrs. Prescott.
+
+She was thinking of those paths of wondering, every path leading into
+other paths--intricate, limitless. She had been asleep. Now she was
+awake. It was through Ann it had come. Perhaps more had come through Ann
+than was in Ann, but beneath all else, deeper even than that warm
+tenderness flowering from Ann's need of her, was that tenderness of the
+awakened spirit--a grateful song coming through an opening door.
+
+It had so claimed her that she was startled at sound of Mrs. Prescott's
+voice as she said, with a nervous little laugh: "Why, Katie, you alarm
+me. You make me feel she must be strange."
+
+"She is strange," said Katie.
+
+"Would you say, Katie," she asked anxiously, "that she is the sort of
+girl to make my boy a good wife?"
+
+Suddenly the idea of Ann's making Harry Prescott any kind of wife
+came upon Katie as preposterous. Not because she would be bringing
+him a "past," but because she would bring gifts he would not know
+what to do with.
+
+"I don't think of Ann as the making some man a good wife type. I think of
+Ann," she tried to formulate it, "as having gone upon a quest, as being
+ever upon a quest."
+
+"A--quest?" faltered Mrs. Prescott. "For what?"
+
+"Life," said Katie, peering off into the darkness.
+
+Mrs. Prescott was manifestly disturbed at the prospect of a
+daughter-in-law upon a quest. "She sounds--temperamental," she said
+critically.
+
+"Yes," said Katie, laughing a little grimly, "she's temperamental
+all right."
+
+They could not say more, as Ann and Wayne were coming toward them across
+the grass.
+
+And almost immediately afterward the Osborne car again stopped before the
+house. It was Mr. Osborne himself this time, bringing the Leonards, who
+had been dining with him. They had stopped to see Mrs. Prescott.
+
+Katie was not sorry, for it turned Mrs. Prescott from Ann. Like the
+football player who has lost his wind, she wanted a little time
+counted out.
+
+But she soon found that she was not playing anything so kindly as a game
+of hard and fast rules.
+
+It seemed at first that Ann's ride had done her good. She seemed to have
+relaxed and did not give Katie that sense of something smoldering within
+her. Katie sat beside her, an arm thrown lightly about Ann's
+shoulders--lightly but guardingly.
+
+Neither of them talked much. Mrs. Prescott and Mrs. Leonard were
+"visiting"; the men talking of some affairs of Mr. Osborne's. He was
+commending the army for minding its own business--not "butting in" and
+trying to ruin business the way some other departments of the Government
+did. The army seemed in high favor with Mr. Osborne.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Leonard turned to Katie. She was a large woman, poised by
+the shallow serenity of self-approval.
+
+"I do feel so sorry for Miss Osborne," she said. "Such a shocking thing
+has occurred. One of the girls at the candy factory--you know she's
+trying so hard to help them--has committed suicide!"
+
+Mrs. Prescott uttered an exclamation of horror. Katie patted the shoulder
+beside her soothingly, understandingly, and as if begging for calm. Even
+under her light touch she seemed to feel the nerves leap up.
+
+Mr. Osborne turned to them. "Poor Cal, she'd better let things alone.
+What's the use? She can't do anything with people like that."
+
+"It's the cause of the suicide that's the disgusting thing," said
+Colonel Leonard.
+
+"Or rather," amended his wife, "the lack of cause."
+
+"But surely," protested Mrs. Prescott, "no girl would take her life
+without--what she thought was cause. Surely all human beings hold life
+and death too sacred for that."
+
+"Oh, do they?" scoffed Mrs. Leonard. "Not that class. I scarcely expect
+you to believe me--I had a hard time believing it myself--but she says
+she committed suicide--she left a note for her room-mate--because she
+was 'tired of not having any fun!'"
+
+The hand upon Ann's shoulder grew fairly eloquent. And Ann seemed trying.
+Her hands were tightly clasped in her lap.
+
+"Why, I don't know," said Wayne, "I think that's about one of the best
+reasons I can think of."
+
+"This is not a jesting matter, Captain Jones," said Mrs. Leonard
+severely.
+
+"Far from it," said Wayne.
+
+"Think what it means to a girl like Caroline Osborne! A girl who is
+trying to do something for humanity--to find the people she wants to
+uplift so trivial--so without souls!"
+
+"It is hard on Cal," agreed Cal's father.
+
+"Though perhaps just a trifle harder," ventured Wayne, "on the
+girl who did."
+
+"Well, what did she do it for?" he demanded. "Come now, Captain, you
+can't make out much of a case for her. Mrs. Leonard's word is just
+right--trivial. She said she was tired of things. Tired--tired--tired of
+things, she put it. Tired of walking down the same street. Tired of
+hanging her hat on the same kind of a peg! Now, Captain--if you can put
+up any defense for a girl who kills herself because she's tired of
+hanging her hat on a certain kind of peg! Well," he laughed, "if you can,
+all I've got to say is that you'd better leave the army and go in for
+criminal law."
+
+"Why didn't she walk down some other street," he resumed, as no one
+broke the pause. "If it's a matter of life and death--a person might walk
+down some other street!"
+
+"And I've no doubt," said Captain Prescott, "that if it were known her
+life, as well as her hat, hung upon it--she might have had a different
+kind of peg."
+
+They laughed.
+
+"Oh, of course, the secret of it is," pronounced the Colonel, "she was a
+neurotic."
+
+For the first time Katie spoke. "I think it's such a fine thing we got
+hold of that word. Since we've known about neurotics we can just throw
+all the emotion and suffering and tragedy of the world in the one heap
+and leave it to the scientists. It lets _us_ out so beautifully,
+doesn't it?"
+
+"Oh, but Katie!" admonished Mrs. Prescott. "Think of it! What is the
+world coming to? Going forth to meet one's God because one doesn't like
+the peg for one's hat!"
+
+Katie had a feeling of every nerve in Ann's body leaping up in frenzy.
+"_God_?" she laughed wildly. "Don't drag _Him_ into it! Do you think _He_
+cares"--turning upon Mrs. Prescott as if she would spring at her--"do you
+think for a minute _He_ cares--_what kind of pegs our hats are on_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Katie's memory of what followed was blurred. She remembered how relieved
+she was when Ann's laugh--oh the memory of that laugh was clear
+enough!--gave way to sobbing. Sobbing was easier to deal with. She said
+something about her friend's being ill, and that they would have to
+excuse them. She almost wanted to laugh--or was it cry?--herself at the
+way Harry Prescott was looking from Ann to his mother. After she got Ann
+in the house she went back and begged somebody's pardon--she wasn't sure
+whose--and told Colonel Leonard that of course he could understand it on
+the score of Ann's being a neurotic. She was afraid she might have said
+that rather disagreeably. And she believed she told Mrs. Prescott--she
+had to tell Mrs. Prescott something, she looked so frightened and hurt
+and outraged--that Ann had a form of nervous trouble which made it
+impossible for her to hear the name of God.
+
+The hardest was Wayne. She came to him on the porch after the others had
+gone--they were not long in dispersing. "Wayne," she said, "I'm sorry to
+have embarrassed you."
+
+His short, curt laugh did not reveal his mood. It was
+scoffing--contemptuous--but she could not tell at what it scoffed. He had
+not turned toward her.
+
+"I'm sorry," she repeated. "Ann will be sorry. She's so--"
+
+He turned upon her hotly. "Katie, quit lying to _me_. I know there's
+something you're not telling. I've suspected it for some time. Now don't
+get off any of that 'nervous trouble' talk to me!"
+
+She stood there dumbly.
+
+It seemed to enrage him. "Why don't you go and look after her! What do
+you mean by leaving her all alone?"
+
+So she went to look after her.
+
+Ann looked like one who needed looking after. Her eyes were intolerably
+bright. It seemed the heat behind them must put them out.
+
+She was walking about the room, walking as if something were behind her
+with a lash.
+
+"You see, Katie," she began, not pausing in the walking--her voice,
+too, as though a whip were behind it--"it was just as I told you. It
+was just as I tried to tell you. There are two worlds. There's no use
+trying to put me in yours. See what I bring you! See what you get for
+it! See what--"
+
+She stood still, rocking back and forth as she stood there. "It was too
+much for me to hear her talking about _God!_ That was a little too much!
+_My_ father was a minister!" And Ann laughed.
+
+A minister was one thing Katie had not thought of. Even in that moment
+she was conscious of relief. Certainly the ministry was respectable.
+
+But why should it be "too much" for the daughter of a minister to hear
+anything about God?
+
+"Ann," she began quietly, "I don't want to force anything. If you want
+to be alone I'll even take my things and sleep somewhere else. But, Ann,
+dear, if you could tell me a little I wouldn't be so much in the dark; I
+could do better for us both."
+
+Ann did not seem to notice what she was saying. "She was tired of things!
+She was tired of things! Tired of hanging her hat on the same kind of
+peg! Why it's awful--it's awful, I tell you--to always be hanging your
+hat on the same kind of peg!
+
+"She was tired of not having any fun! Oh so tired of not having any fun!
+Why you don't care what you do when you get tired of not having any fun!
+
+"Then people laugh--the people who have all the fun. Oh they think it's
+so funny!--the people who don't have to hang their hats on any kind of
+peg. So trivial. So--what's that nervous word? Katie--you're not like the
+rest of them! Why, you seem to _know_--just know without knowing."
+
+"But it's hard for me," suggested Katie. "Trying to know--and not
+knowing."
+
+Ann was still walking about the room. "I was brought up in a little town
+in Indiana. You see I'm going to tell you. I've got to be doing
+something--and it may as well be talking. Now how did I start? Oh yes--I
+was brought up in a little town in Indiana. Until three years ago, that
+was where I lived. Were you ever in a little town in Indiana?"
+
+Katie replied in the negative.
+
+"Maybe there are little towns in Indiana that are different. I don't
+know. Maybe there are. But this one-in this one life was just one long
+stretch of hanging your hat on exactly the same kind of peg!
+
+"It was so square--so flat--so dingy--oh, so dreadful! It didn't have
+anything around it--as some towns do--a hill, or a river, or woods.
+Around it was something that was just nothing. It was just walled in by
+the nothingness all around it.
+
+"And the people in it were flat, and square, and dingy. And the things
+around them were just nothing. They were walled in, too, by the
+nothingness all around them."
+
+Then the most unexpected of all things happened. Ann smiled. "Katie, I'd
+like to have seen you in that town!"
+
+"I'm afraid," said Katie, "that I would have invented a new kind of peg."
+
+The smile seemed to have done Ann good. She sat down, grew more natural.
+
+"When I try to tell about my life in that town I suppose it sounds as
+though I were making a terrible fuss about things. When you think of
+children that haven't any homes-that are beaten by drunken
+fathers--starved--overworked-but it was the nothingness. If my father
+only had got drunk!"
+
+Katie smiled understandingly.
+
+"Katie, you've a lot of imagination. Just try to think what it would mean
+never to have what you could really call fun!"
+
+Katie took a sweep back over her own life--full to the brim of fun. Her
+imagination did not go far enough to get a real picture of life with the
+fun left out.
+
+"Oh, of course," said Ann, "there were pleasures! My father and the
+people of his church were like Miss Osborne--they believed it was one of
+the underlying principles of life--only they would call it 'God's
+will'--that all must have pleasure. But such God-fearing pleasure! I
+think I could have stood it if it hadn't been for the pleasures."
+
+"Pleasures with the fun left out," suggested Kate.
+
+"Yes, though fun isn't the word, for I don't mean just good times. I
+mean--I mean--"
+
+"You mean the joy of living," said Katie. "You mean the loveliness of
+life."
+
+"Yes; now your kind of religion--the kind of religion your kind of people
+have, doesn't seem to hurt them any."
+
+Katie laughed oddly. "True; it doesn't hurt us much."
+
+"My father's kind is something so different. The love of God seems to
+have dried him up. He's not a human being. He's a Christian."
+
+Katie thought of her uncle--a bishop, and all too human a human being.
+She was about to protest, then considered that she had never known the
+kind of Christian--or human being--Ann was talking about.
+
+"Everything at our church squeaked. The windows. The organ. The deacon's
+shoes. My father's voice. The religion squeaked. Life squeaked.
+
+"I'll tell you a story, Katie, that maybe will make you see how it was.
+It's about a dog, and it's easy for you to understand things about dogs.
+
+"Some one gave him to me. I suppose he was not a fine dog--not
+full-blooded. But that didn't matter. _You_ know that we don't love dogs
+for their blood. We love them for the way they look out of their eyes,
+and the way they wag their tails. I can't tell you what this dog meant to
+me--something to love--something that loved me--some one to play with--a
+companion--a friend--something that didn't have anything to do with my
+father's church!
+
+"He used to feel so sorry when I had to sit learning Bible verses.
+Sometimes he would put his two paws up on my lap and try to push the
+Bible away. I loved him for that. And when at last I could put it away he
+would dance round me with little yelps of joy. He warmed something in me.
+He kept something alive.
+
+"And then one day when I came home from a missionary meeting where I had
+read a paper telling how cruelly young girls were treated by their
+parents in India, and how there was no joy and love and beauty in their
+lives, I--" Ann hid her face and it was a drawn, grayish face she raised
+after a minute--"Tono was not there. I called and called him. My father
+was writing a sermon. He let me go on calling. I could not understand it.
+Tono always came running down the walk, wagging his tail and giving his
+little barks of joy when I came. It had made coming home seem different
+from what it had ever seemed before. But that day he was not there
+watching for me. My father let me go on calling for a long time. At last
+he came to the door and said--'Please stop that unseemly noise. The dog
+has been sent away.' 'Sent _away_?' I whispered. 'What do you mean?' 'I
+mean that I have seen fit to dispose of him,' he answered. I was
+trembling all over. 'What right had you to dispose of him?' I wanted to
+know. 'He wasn't your dog--' The answer was that I was to go up to my
+room and learn Bible verses until the Lord chastened my spirit. Then I
+said things. I would _not_ learn Bible verses. I _would_ have my dog. It
+ended"--Ann was trembling uncontrollably--"it ended with the rod being
+unspared. God's forgiveness was invoked with each stroke."
+
+She was digging her finger nails into her palms. Katie put her arms
+around her. "I wouldn't, Ann dear--it isn't worth while. It's all over
+now. Wouldn't it be better to forget?"
+
+"No, I want to tell you. Some day I may try to tell you other things. I
+want this to try to explain them. Loving dogs, you will understand
+this--better than you could some other things.
+
+"The dog had been given away to some one who lived in the country. It was
+because I had played with him the Sunday morning before and had been late
+to Sunday-school."
+
+Her voice was dry and hard; it was from Katie there came the exclamation
+of protest and contempt.
+
+"No one except one who loves dogs as you do would know what it meant.
+Even you can't quite know. For Tono was all I had. He--"
+
+Katie's arm about her tightened.
+
+"I could have stood it for myself. I could have stood my own
+lonesomeness. But what I couldn't stand was thinking about him. Nights I
+would wake up and think of him--out in the cold--homesick--maybe
+hungry--not understanding--watching and waiting--wondering why I didn't
+come. I couldn't keep from thinking about things that tortured me. This
+man was a deacon in my father's church. From the way he prayed, I knew he
+was not one to be good to dogs.
+
+"And then one afternoon I heard the little familiar scratch at the door.
+I rushed to it, and there he was--shivering--but oh so, so glad! He
+sprang right into my arms--we cried and cried together--sitting there on
+the floor. His heart had been almost broken--he had grieved--_suffered_.
+He wasn't willing to leave my arms; just whimpering the way one does when
+a dreadful thing is over--licking my face--you know how they do--you know
+how dear they are.
+
+"Now I will tell you what I did. Holding him in my arms, my face buried
+in his fur--I made up my mind. The family would be away for at least an
+hour. I would give him the happiest hour I knew how to give him. One
+hour--it was all I had the power to give him. Then--because I loved him
+so much--I would end his life."
+
+Katie's face whitened. "I carried out the plan," Ann went on. "I gave him
+the meat we were to have had for supper. I had him do all his little
+tricks. I loved him and loved him. I do not think any little dog ever
+had a happier hour.
+
+"And then--down at a house in the next block I saw my father--and the man
+he had given Tono to. The man was coming to our house for supper. Our
+time was up.
+
+"I can never explain to any one the way I did it--the way I felt as I did
+it. There was no crying. There was no faltering. It seemed that all at
+once I understood--understood the hardness of life--that things _are_
+hard--that things have _got_ to be done. Then was when it came to me that
+you've got to harden yourself--that it's the only way.
+
+"I filled a tub with water--I didn't know any other way to do it. Tono
+stood there watching me. I took a bucket. I took up the dog. I hugged
+him. I let him lick my face. Though I live to be very old, Katie, and
+suffer very much, I can never forget the look in his eyes as I put him in
+the water and held him to put down the bucket. There are things a person
+goes through that make perfect happiness forever impossible. There are
+hours that stay."
+
+The face of the soldier's daughter was wet. "I love you for it, Ann," she
+whispered. "I love you for it. It was strong, Ann. It was fine."
+
+"I wasn't very strong and fine the minute it was over," sobbed Ann.
+"I fainted. They found me there. And then I screamed and laughed and
+said I was going to kill all the dogs in the world. I said--oh,
+dreadful things."
+
+"They should have understood," murmured Kate.
+
+"They didn't. They said I was wicked. They said the Evil One had entered
+into me. They said I must pray God to forgive me for having killed one of
+his creatures! Me--!
+
+"Of course it ended in Bible verses. Is it so strange I _loathed_ the
+Bible? And every morning I had to hear myself prayed for as a wicked girl
+who would harm one of God's creatures. The Almighty was implored not to
+send me to Hell. 'Send me there if you want to,' I'd say to myself on my
+knees, 'Tono's not in Hell, anyway.'"
+
+Ann laughed bitterly. "So that's why I'm a sacrilegious, blasphemous
+person who doesn't care much about hearing about God. I associate Him
+with thin lips that shut together tight-and people who make long
+prayers and break little dogs' hearts--and with boots--and souls--that
+squeak. I can't think of one single thing I ever heard about Him that
+made me like Him."
+
+"Oh, Ann dear!" protested Katie shudderingly.
+
+"Try not to think such things. Try not to feel that way. You haven't
+heard everything there is to hear about God. You haven't heard any of it
+in the right way."
+
+"Perhaps not. I only know what I have heard." And Ann's face was too
+white and hard for Katie to say more.
+
+"And your mother, dear? Where was she all this time? Didn't she love
+you--and help?"
+
+"She died when I was twelve. She'd like to have loved me. She did some on
+the sly--in a scared kind of way."
+
+Katie sat there contemplating the picture of Ann's father and mother and
+Ann--_Ann_, as child of that union.
+
+"I think she died because life frightened her so. In a year my father
+married again. _She_ isn't afraid of anything. She's a God-fearing,
+exemplary woman. And she always looks to see if you have any mud on
+your shoes."
+
+After a moment Ann said quietly: "I hate her."
+
+"So would I," said Katie, and it brought the ghost of a smile to Ann's
+lips, perhaps thinking of just how cordially Katie would hate her.
+
+"And then after a while you left this town?" Katie suggested as Ann
+seemed held there by something.
+
+"Yes, after a while I left." And that held her again.
+
+"I was fifteen when I--freed Tono from life," she emerged from it. "It
+was five years later that you--stopped me from freeing myself. Lots of
+things were crowded into those five years, Katie--or rather into the last
+three of them. I had to be treated worse than Tono was treated before it
+came to me that I had better be as kind to myself as I had been to my
+dog. Only I," Ann laughed, "didn't have anybody to give me a last hour!"
+
+"But you see it wasn't a last hour, after all," soothed Katie. "Only the
+last hour of the old hard things. Things that can never come back."
+
+"Can't they come back, Katie? Can't they?"
+
+Katie shook her head with decision. "Do you think I'd let them come
+back? Why I'd shut the door in their face!"
+
+"Sometimes," said Ann, "it seems to me they're lying in wait for me. That
+they're going to spring out. That this is a dream. That there isn't any
+Katie Jones. Some nights I've been afraid to go to sleep. Afraid of
+waking to find it a dream. There's an awful dream I dream sometimes! The
+dream is that this is a dream."
+
+"Poor dear," murmured Katie. "It will be more real now that we've
+talked."
+
+"I used to dream a dream, Katie, and I think it was about you. Only you
+weren't any one thing. You were all kinds of different things. Lovely
+things. You were Something Somewhere. You were the something that was way
+off beyond the nothingness of Centralia."
+
+"The something that didn't squeak," suggested Katie tremulously.
+
+"Something Somewhere. You were both a waking and a sleeping dream. I knew
+you were there. Isn't it queer how we do--know without knowing? My father
+used to talk about people being 'called.' Called to the ministry--called
+to the missionary field--called to heaven. Well maybe you're called to
+other things, too. Maybe," said Ann with a laugh which sobbed, "you're
+even 'called' to Chicago."
+
+The laugh died and the sob lingered. "Only when you get there--Chicago
+doesn't seem to know that it had called you.
+
+"My Something Somewhere was always something I never could catch up
+with. Sometimes it was a beautiful country--where a river wound through a
+woods. Sometimes it was beautiful people laughing and dancing. Sometimes
+it was a star. Sometimes it was a field of flowers--all blowing back and
+forth. Sometimes it was a voice--a wonderful far-away voice. Sometimes it
+was a lovely dress--oh a wonderful gauzy dress--or a hat that was like
+the blowing field of flowers. Sometimes--this was the loveliest of
+all--it was somebody who loved me. But whatever it was, it was something
+I couldn't overtake.
+
+"And you mustn't laugh, Katie, when I tell you that the thing that made
+me think I could catch up with it was a moving-picture show!
+
+"It came to Centralia--the first one that had ever been there. I heard
+the people next door talking about it. They said there were pictures of
+things that really happened in the great cities--oh of kings and queens
+and the president and millionaires and automobile races and grand
+weddings; that the pictures went on just like the happenings went on;
+that it was just as if the pictures were alive; that it was just like
+being there.
+
+"Oh, I was so excited about it! I was so excited I could hardly
+get ready.
+
+"You see ever since Tono had died--two years before, I had kept that idea
+that things were hard. That the thing to do was to be hard. I dreamed
+about things that were lovely--the Something Somewhere things--but as far
+as the real things went I never changed my mind about them. You mustn't
+let them into your heart. They just wanted to get in there to hurt you.
+
+"Now I forgot all about that. These pictures were dreams made real. They
+had caught up with the Something Somewhere. And I was going to see them.
+
+"But I didn't--not that day. I was so happy that my father suspected
+something. And he got it out of me and said I couldn't go. He said that
+the things that would be pictured would be the wickedness of the world.
+That I was not to see it.
+
+"But I made up my mind that I would see the wickedness of the world." Ann
+paused, and then said in lower voice: "And I have--and not just in
+pictures."
+
+She seemed to be meeting something, and she answered it. "But just the
+same," she made answer defiantly, "I'd rather see the wickedness of the
+world than stay in the nothingness of the world!
+
+"The pictures were to be there a week. I thought of nothing else but how
+I could see them. The last day there was a thimble-bee. I went to the
+thimble-bee--said I couldn't stay--and went to the pictures.
+
+"Katie, that moving-picture show was proof. Proof of the Something
+Somewhere. And in my heart I made a vow--it was a _solemn_ vow--that I
+would find the things that moved in the pictures.
+
+"And there was music--such music as I had never heard before, even though
+it came out of a box. They had the songs of the grand opera singers. And
+as I listened--I tell you I was called!--I don't care how silly it
+sounds--I was called by the voices that had sung into that box. For this
+was real--if the life hadn't been there it couldn't have been caught into
+the pictures and the box. It proved--I thought--that all the lovely
+things I had dreamed were true. I had only to go and find them. People
+were walking upon those streets. Then I could walk on those streets. And
+those people were laughing--and talking to each other. Everybody seemed
+to have friends. Everybody was happy! And all of that really _was_. The
+pictures were alive. Alive with the things that there were out beyond the
+nothingness of Centralia.
+
+"The man played something from an opera and showed pictures of beautiful
+people going into a beautiful place to listen to that very music. He said
+that the very next night in Chicago those people would be going into that
+place to listen to those very voices.
+
+"Katie, I don't believe you'll laugh at me when I tell you that my teeth
+fairly chattered when first it came to me that I must be one of those
+people! It was something all different from the longing for fun--oh it
+was something big--terrible--it _had_ to be. It was the same feeling of
+its having to be that I had about Tono.
+
+"Though probably that feeling would have passed away if it hadn't been
+for my father. He came there and found me, and--humiliated me. And after
+we got home--" Ann was holding herself tight, but after a moment she
+relaxed to say with an attempted laugh: "It wasn't all being 'called.'
+Part of it was being driven.
+
+"Then there was another thing. The treasurer of the missionary society
+came that night with some money--eighteen dollars--I was to send off the
+next day. It was that money started me out to find my Something
+Somewhere."
+
+"Oh _Ann_!" whispered Katie, drawing back. "But of course," she added,
+"you paid it back just as soon as you could?"
+
+"I _never_ paid it back! If I had eighteen _million_ dollars, I'd _never_
+pay it back! I _like_ to think of not paying it back!"
+
+Katie's face hardened. "I can't understand that."
+
+"No," sobbed Ann, "you'd have to have lived a long time in nothingness to
+understand that--and some other things, too." She looked at her
+strangely. "There's more coming, Katie, that you won't be able to
+understand."
+
+Katie's face was averted, but something in Ann's voice made her turn to
+her. "I think it was wrong, Ann. There's no use in my pretending I don't.
+I _can't_ understand this. But maybe I can understand some of the other
+things better than you think."
+
+"I left at six o'clock the next morning," Ann went back to it when
+she was calmer. "And at the last minute I don't think I would have
+had the courage to go if my father hadn't been snoring so. How silly
+it all sounds!
+
+"And the only reason I got on the train was that it would have taken
+more courage to go back than to go on.
+
+"Katie, some time I'll tell you all about it. How I felt when I got to
+Chicago. How it seemed to shriek and roar. How I seemed just buried
+under the noise. How I walked around the streets that day--frightened
+almost to death--and yet, inside the fright, just crazy about it. And
+how green I was!
+
+"Nothing seemed to matter except going to grand opera. I didn't even have
+sense enough to find a place to stay. I thought about it, but didn't know
+how, and anyhow the most important thing was finding the things that
+moved in the pictures--and sang in the box.
+
+"I saw a woman go up to a policeman and ask him where something was and
+he told her, so I did that, too. Asked him where you went to hear grand
+opera. And he pointed. I was right there by it.
+
+"I heard some people talking about going in to get tickets. So I thought
+I had better get a ticket.
+
+"But they didn't have any. They were all gone.
+
+"When I came out I was almost crying. Then a smiling man outside stepped
+up to me and said he had tickets and he'd let me have one for ten
+dollars. I was so glad he had them! Ten dollars seemed a good deal--but I
+didn't think much about it.
+
+"Then I had my ticket and just two dollars left.
+
+"But that night at the opera I didn't know whether I had two dollars, or
+no dollars, or a thousand dollars. At first I was frightened because
+everybody but me had on such beautiful clothes. But soon I was too crazy
+about their clothes to care--and then after the music began--
+
+"Oh, Katie! Suppose you'd always dreamed of something and never been
+able to catch up with it. Suppose you'd not even been able to really
+dream it, but just dream that it was, and then suppose it all came--No,
+I can't tell you. You'd have to have lived in Centralia--and been a
+minister's daughter.
+
+"My heart sang more beautifully than the singers sang. 'Now you have
+found it! Now you have found it!' my heart kept singing.
+
+"When all the other people left I left too--in a dream. For it had
+passed into a dream--into a beautiful dream that was going to shelter it
+for me forever.
+
+"I stood around watching the beautiful people getting into their
+carriages. And I couldn't make myself believe that it was in the same
+world with Centralia.
+
+"Then after a while it occurred to me that all those people were going
+home. Everybody was going home.
+
+"At first I wasn't frightened. Something inside me was singing over and
+over the songs of the opera. I was too far in my dream to be much
+frightened.
+
+"Then all at once I got--oh, so tired. And cold. And so frightened I did
+not know what to do. My dream seemed to have taken wings and flown away.
+All the beautiful laughing people had gone. It was just as if I woke up.
+And I was on the strange streets all alone. Only some noisy men who
+frightened me.
+
+"I hid in a doorway till those men got by. And then I saw a woman
+coming. She was all alone, too. She had on a dress that rustled and
+lovely white furs, and did not seem at all frightened.
+
+"I stepped out and asked her to please tell me where to go for the night.
+
+"Some time I'll tell you about her, too. Now I'll just tell you that it
+ended with her taking me home with her to stay all night. She made a lot
+of fun of me--and said things to me I didn't understand--and swore at
+me--and told me to 'cut it' and go back to the cornfields--but I was
+crying then, and she took me with her.
+
+"She kept up her queer kind of talk, but I was so tired that the minute I
+was in bed I went to sleep.
+
+"The next morning she told me I had got to go back to the woods. I said I
+would if there were any woods. But there weren't. She laughed and said
+more queer things. She asked me why I had come, and I told her. First she
+laughed. Then she sat there staring at me--blinking. And what she said
+was: 'Poor little fool. Poor little greenhorn.'
+
+"She asked me what I was going to do, and I said work, so I could stay
+there and go to the opera and see beautiful things. She asked me what
+kind of a job I was figuring on and told me there was only one kind would
+let me in for that. I asked her what it was and she said it was _her_
+line. I asked her if she thought I was fitted for it, and she looked at
+me--a look I didn't understand at all--and said she guessed the men she
+worked for would think so. I asked her if she'd say a good word to them
+for me, and then she turned on me like a tiger and swore and said--No,
+she hadn't come to that!
+
+"It was a case of knowing without knowing. I was so green that I didn't
+know. And yet after a while I did. As I look back on it I appreciate
+things I couldn't appreciate then, thank her for things I didn't know
+enough to thank her for at the time.
+
+"She was leaving that day for San Francisco. She gave me ten dollars, and
+told me if I had any sense I'd take it and go back to prayer-meeting. She
+said I might do worse. But if I didn't have any sense--and she said of
+course I wouldn't--I was to be careful of it until I got a job. She told
+me how to manage. And I was to read 'ads' in the newspaper. She told me
+how to try and get in at the telephone office. She had been there once,
+she said, but it 'got on her nerves.'
+
+"She told me things about girls who worked in Chicago--awful things. But
+I supposed she was prejudiced. The last things she said to me was--'The
+opera! Oh you poor little green kid--I'm afraid I see your finish.'
+
+"But I thought she was queer acting because she led that queer kind
+of a life."
+
+Ann had paused. And suddenly she hid her face in her hands, as if it was
+more than she could face. Katie was smoothing her hair.
+
+"Katie, as the days went on it was just as hard to believe that the world
+of the opera was the same world I was working in--right there in the same
+city--as it had been the first night to believe it was the same world as
+Centralia. I learned two things. One was that the Something Somewhere was
+there. The other that it was not there for me.
+
+"The world was full of things I couldn't understand, but I could
+understand--a little better--the woman who wore the white furs.
+
+"Oh Katie, you get so tired--you get so dead--all day long putting
+suspenders in a box--or making daisies--or addressing envelopes--or
+trying to remember whether it was apple or custard pie--
+
+"And you don't get tired just because your back aches--and your head
+aches--and your hands ache--and your feet ache--you get tired--that kind
+of tired--because the city doesn't care how tired you get!
+
+"I often wondered why I went on, why any of them went on. I used to think
+we must be crazy to be going on."
+
+She was pondering it--somberly wistful. "Though perhaps we're not crazy.
+Perhaps it's the--call. Katie, what is it? That call? That thing that
+makes us keep on even when our Something Somewhere won't have anything to
+do with us?"
+
+Katie did not reply. She had no reply.
+
+"At last I got in the telephone office. That's considered a fine place to
+work. They're like Miss Osborne; they believe it is one of the
+fundamental principles of life that all must have pleasures. But they
+were like the pleasures of Centralia--not God-fearing, exactly, but so
+dutiful. They didn't have anything to do with 'calls.'
+
+"The real pleasures were going over the wire. It was my business to make
+the connections that arrange those pleasures. A little red light would
+flash--sometimes it would flash straight into my brain--and I'd say
+'Number, please?'--always with the rising inflection. Then I'd get the
+connection and Life would pass through the cords. That was the closest I
+came to it--operating the cords that it went through. There was a whole
+city full of it--beautiful, laughing, loving Life. But it was on the
+wire--just as in Centralia it had been in the pictures--and in the box.
+And oh I used to get so tired--so tight--operating the cords for Life.
+Sometimes when I left my chair the whole world was one big red light. And
+at night they danced dances for me--those little red lights."
+
+She brushed her hand before her eyes as if they were there again and she
+would push them away. "Katie," she suddenly burst forth, "if you ever do
+pray--if you believe in praying--pray sometimes for the girl who goes to
+Chicago to find what you call the 'joy of living.' Pray for the pilgrims
+who go to the cities to find their Something Somewhere. And whatever you
+do, Katie--whatever you do--don't ever laugh at the people who kill
+themselves because they're tired of not having any fun!"
+
+"But wasn't there _any_ fun, dear?" Katie asked after a moment.
+
+Ann did not speak, but looked at Katie strangely. "Yes," she said.
+"Afterwards. Differently."
+
+They were silent. Something seemed to be outlining itself between them.
+Something which was meaning to grow there between them.
+
+"There came a time," said Ann, "when all of life was not going over
+the wire."
+
+And still Katie did not speak, as if pushed back by that thing shaping
+itself between them.
+
+"Your Something Somewhere," said Ann, very low, "doesn't always come
+in just the way you were looking for it. But, Katie, if you get _very_
+tired waiting for it--don't you believe you might take it--most any
+way it came?"
+
+It was a worn and wistful face she turned to Katie. Suddenly Katie
+brushed away the thing that would grow up between them and laid her cheek
+upon Ann's hair. "Poor child," she murmured, and the tears were upon
+Ann's soft brown hair. "Poor weary little pilgrim."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Ann remained in her room all of the next day. Katie encouraged her to do
+so, wishing to foster the idea of illness.
+
+It did not need much fostering. She had not gone back to those old days
+without leaving with them most of her newly accumulated vitality. But it
+was weakness rather than nervousness. Talking to Katie seemed to have
+relieved a pressure.
+
+It was Katie who was nervous. It was as if a battery within her had been
+charged to its uttermost. She was in some kind of electric communication
+with life. She was tingling with the things coming to her.
+
+So charged was she with new big things that it was hard to manage the
+affairs of her household as old things demanded they be managed that day.
+She told Mrs. Prescott again how sorry she and Ann were that Ann had
+given way. Mrs. Prescott received it with self-contained graciousness.
+Her one comment was that she trusted when her son decided to marry he
+would content himself with a wife who had not gone upon a quest.
+
+Katie smiled and agreed that it might get him a more comfortable wife.
+
+The son himself she tried to avoid. That thing which had tried to shape
+itself between her and Ann still remained there, a thing without body
+but vaguely outlined between Ann and all other things.
+
+They had not drawn any nearer to it. They let the story rest at the place
+where all of life had not been going over the wire.
+
+And Katie told herself that she understood. That Ann was to be judged
+by the Something Somewhere she had formed in her heart rather than by
+whatever it was life had tardily and ungenerously and unwisely
+brought her.
+
+That Ann might still cling to a Something Somewhere--a thing for which
+even yet she would keep the heart right--was suggested that afternoon
+when Katie told her of Captain Prescott.
+
+She had not meant to tell her. She tried to think she was doing it in
+order to know how to meet Harry, but had to admit finally that she did it
+for no nobler reason than to see how Ann would take it.
+
+She took it most unexpectedly. "I am sorry," she said simply, "but I do
+not care at all for Captain Prescott. I--" She paused, coloring slightly
+as she said with a little laugh: "We all like to be liked, don't we,
+Katie? And with me--well it meant something just to know I could be
+liked--in that nice kind of way. It helped. But that's all--so I hope he
+doesn't care very much for me. Though if he does," concluded Ann sagely,
+"he'll get over it. He's not the caring sort."
+
+The words had a familiar sound; after a moment she remembered them as
+what he had said that night of the "Don't You Care" girls.
+
+While she would have been panic-stricken at finding Ann interested, she
+was more discomfited than relieved at not finding her more impressed. "To
+marry into the army, Ann," she said, "is considered very advantageous."
+
+Ann was lying there with her face pillowed upon her hand. She turned her
+large eyes, about which just then there were large circles, seriously, it
+would even seem rebukingly, upon Katie. "If I ever should marry," she
+said, "it will be for some other reason than because it is
+'advantageous.'"
+
+Katie felt both rebuked and startled. Most of the girls she knew--girls
+who had never worked in factories or restaurants or telephone offices, or
+had never thought of taking their own lives, had not scorned to look upon
+marriages as advantageous.
+
+Nor, for that matter, had Katie herself.
+
+Ann's superior attitude toward marriage turned Katie to religion. As the
+niece of a bishop she was moved to set Ann right on things within a
+bishop's domain. And underlying that was an impulse to set her right
+with herself.
+
+"Ann," she said, "if somebody said to you, 'I starve you in the name of
+Katie Jones,' wouldn't you say, 'Oh no you don't. Starve me if you want
+to, but don't tell me you do it in the name of Katie Jones. She doesn't
+want people starved!'"
+
+"I could say that," said Ann, "because I know you, and know you don't
+want people starved. But if I'd never heard anything about you except
+that I was to be starved in your name--"
+
+"I should think even so you might question. Didn't it ever occur to you
+that God had more to do with your Something Somewhere than He did with
+things done in His name in Centralia?"
+
+"Why, Katie, how strange you should think of that. For I thought of
+it--but I supposed it was the most wicked thought of all."
+
+"How strange it would be," said Katie, "if He had more to do with the
+'call' than with the God-fearing things you were called from."
+
+For an instant Ann's face lighted up. But it hardened. "Well, if He had,"
+she said, "it seems He might have stood by me a little better after I was
+'called.'"
+
+Katie had no reply for that, so she turned to her uncle, the Bishop.
+
+"Well there's one place where you're wrong, Ann; and that is that
+religion is incompatible with the love of dogs. You know my uncle--my
+mother's brother--is a bishop. I don't know just how well uncle
+understands God, but if he understands Him as well as he does dogs then
+he must be well fitted for his office. I don't think in his heart uncle
+would have any respect for any person--no matter how religious--or even
+how much they subscribed--who wouldn't appreciate the tragedy of losing
+one's dog. Uncle has a splendid dog--a Great Dane; they're real chums. He
+often reads his sermons to Caesar. He says Caesar can stay awake under
+them longer than some of the congregation. I once shocked, but I think
+secretly delighted uncle, by saying that he rendered to Caesar the
+things that were Caesar's and to God what Caesar left. Well, one dreadful
+day someone stole Caesar. They took him out of town, but Caesar got away
+and made a return that has gone down into dog history. Poor uncle had
+been all broken up about it for three days. He was to preach that
+morning. My heart ached for him as he stood there at his study window
+looking down the street when it was time to go. I knew what he was hoping
+for--the way you go on hoping against hope when your dog's lost. And then
+after uncle had gone, and just as I was ready to start myself, I heard
+the great deep bark of mighty Caesar! You may know I was wild about
+it--and crazy to get the news to uncle. I hurried over to church, but
+service had begun. But because I was bursting to tell it, and because I
+appreciated something of what it would mean to talk about the goodness of
+God when you weren't feeling that way, I wrote a little note and sent it
+up. I suppose the people who saw it passed into the chancel in dignified
+fashion thought it was something of ecclesiastical weight. What it said
+was, 'Hallelujah--he's back--safe and sound. K--.'
+
+"It was great fun to watch uncle--he's very dignified in his official
+capacity. He frowned as it was handed him, as if not liking the
+intrusion into holy routine. He did not open it at once but sat there
+holding it rebukingly--me chuckling down in the family pew. Then he
+adjusted his glasses and opened it--ponderously. I wish you could have
+seen his face! One of our friends said he supposed it read, 'Will give
+fifty thousand.' He quickly recalled his robes and suppressed his grin,
+contenting himself with a beatific expression which must have been very
+uplifting to the congregation. I think I never saw uncle look so
+spiritual. And I know I never heard him preach as feelingly. When he
+came to the place about when sorrow has been upon the heart, and seemed
+more than the heart could bear, but when the weight is lifted, as the
+loving Father so often does mercifully lift it--oh I tell you there were
+tears in more eyes than uncle's. I had my suspicions, and that night I
+asked, 'Uncle, did you preach the sermon you meant to preach this
+morning?' And uncle--if he weren't a bishop I would say he winked at
+me--replied, 'No, dear little shark. I had meant to preach the one about
+man yearning for Heaven because earth is a vale of tears.' I'm just
+telling you this yarn, Ann, to make you see that religion doesn't
+necessarily rule out the love of dogs."
+
+"It's a nice story, and I'm glad you told me," replied Ann. "Only my
+father would say that your uncle had no religion."
+
+Katie laughed. "A remark which has not gone unremarked. Certainly he
+hasn't enough to let it harden his heart. As I am beginning to think
+about things now it seems to me uncle might stand for more vital things
+than he does, but for all that I believe he can love God the more for
+loving Caesar so well."
+
+They were quiet for a time, thinking of Ann's father and Katie's uncle;
+the love of God and the love of dogs and the love of man. Many things.
+Then Ann said: "Naturally you and I don't look at it the same way. I
+see you were brought up on a pleasant kind of religion. The kind that
+doesn't matter."
+
+That phrase started the electric batteries within Katie and the batteries
+got so active she had to go for a walk.
+
+In the course of the walk she stopped at the shops to see Wayne. She
+wanted to know if he would let Worth go into the country for a week with
+Ann. An old servant of theirs--a woman who had been friend as well as
+servant to Katie's mother--lived on a farm about ten miles up the river
+and it had been planned that Worth--and Katie, too, if she would--go up
+there for a week or more during the summer. It seemed just the thing for
+Ann. It would get her away from Captain Prescott and his mother, and from
+Major Darrett, who was coming in a few days. Katie believed Ann would
+like to be away from them all for about a week, and get her bearings
+anew. And Katie herself would like to be alone for a time and get her
+bearings, too, and make some plans. In one way or other she was going to
+help Ann find her real Something Somewhere. Perhaps she would take her to
+Europe. But until things settled down, as Katie vaguely put it, she
+thought it just the thing for Ann to have the little trip with Worth.
+
+Wayne listened gravely, but did not object. He was quiet, and, Katie
+thought, not well. She suggested that working so steadily during the hot
+weather was not good for him.
+
+He laughed shortly and pointed through the open door to the shops where
+long rows of men were working at forges--perspiration streaming down
+their faces.
+
+But instead of alluding to them he asked abruptly: "How is she today?"
+
+"Tired," said Katie. "She didn't sleep well last night."
+
+Something in the way he was looking at her brought to Katie acute
+realization of how much she cared for Wayne. He was her big brother. She
+had always been his little sister. They were not giving to thinking of it
+that way--certainly not speaking of it--but the tenderness of the
+relationship was there. Consciousness of it came now as she seemed to
+read in Wayne's look that she hurt him in withholding her confidence, in
+not having felt it possible to trust even him.
+
+She broke under that look. "Wayne dear," she said unevenly, "I don't deny
+there is something to tell. I'd like to tell you, if I could. If ever I
+can, I will."
+
+His reply was only to dismiss it with a curt little nod.
+
+But Katie knew that did not necessarily mean that he was feeling curt.
+
+She was drawn back to the open door from which she could see the long
+double line of men working steadily at the forges.
+
+"What are those men doing?" she asked.
+
+"Forging one of the parts of a rifle," he replied.
+
+It recalled what the man who mended the boats had said of the saddles:
+that the first war those saddles would see would be the war over the
+manufacture of them. Would he go so far as to say the first use for the
+rifles--?
+
+Surely not. He must have been speaking figuratively.
+
+But something in the might of the thing--the long lines of men at work on
+rifles to be used in a possible war--made the industrial side of it seem
+more vital and more interesting than the military phase. This was here.
+This was real. There was practically no military life at the Arsenal--not
+military life in the sense one found it at the cavalry post. That had
+made it seem, from a military standpoint, uninteresting. But here was the
+real life--over in what the women of the quarter vaguely called "the
+shops," and dismissed as disposed of by the term.
+
+Suddenly she wondered what all those men thought about God. Whether
+either the hard blighting religion of Ann's father, or the aesthetic
+comfortable religion of her uncle "mattered" much to them?
+
+Were the things which "mattered" forging a religion of their own?
+
+But just what were those things that mattered?
+
+A young man had entered and was speaking to Wayne. After a second's
+hesitation Wayne introduced him to Katie as Mr. Ferguson, who was
+helping him.
+
+He had an open, intelligent face--this young mechanic. He did not seem
+overwhelmed at being presented to Captain Jones' sister, but merely
+replied pleasantly to her greeting and was turning away.
+
+But Katie was not going to let him get away. If she could help it, Katie
+was not going to let any one get away who she thought could tell her
+anything about the things which were perplexing her--all those things
+pressing closer and closer upon her.
+
+"Do many of these men go to church?" she asked.
+
+He appeared startled. Katie's gown did not suggest a possible tract
+concealed about it.
+
+"Why yes, some of them," he laughed. "I don't think the majority
+of them do."
+
+Then she came right out with it. "What would you say they look upon as
+the most important thing in life?"
+
+He looked startled again, but in more interested way. "Higher wages and
+shorter hours," he said.
+
+"Are you a socialist?" she demanded.
+
+It came so unexpectedly and so bluntly that it confused him. "Why,
+Katie," laughed her brother, "what do you mean by coming over here and
+interviewing men on their politics?"
+
+"What made you think I was a socialist?" asked Ferguson.
+
+"Because you had such a quick answer to such a big question, and seemed
+so sure of yourself. I'm reading a book about socialists. They don't seem
+to think there is a particle of doubt they could put the world to rights,
+and things are so intricate--so confused--I don't see how they can be so
+sure they're saying the final word."
+
+"I don't know that they claim to be saying the final word, but they do
+know they could take away much of the confusion."
+
+Katie was thinking of the story she had heard the night before. "Do you
+think socialism's going to remove all the suffering from the world? Reach
+all the aches and fill all the empty places? Get right into the inner
+things that are the matter and bring peace and good will and loving
+kindness everywhere?"
+
+She had spoken impetuously, and paused with an embarrassed laugh. The
+young mechanic was looking at her gravely, but his look was less strange
+than Wayne's.
+
+"I don't think they'd go that far, Miss Jones. But they do know that
+there's a lot of needless misery they could wipe out."
+
+"They're out and out materialists, aren't they? Everything's
+economic--the economic basis for everything in creation. They seem very
+cocksure that getting that the way they want it would usher in the
+millennium. You said the most important thing in life to these men was
+higher wages and shorter hours. I don't blame them for wanting them--I
+hope they get them--but I don't know that I see it as very promising that
+they regard it as the most important thing in life. To do less and get
+more is not what you'd call a spiritual aspiration, is it?" she laughed.
+"This is what I mean--it's not the end, is it?"
+
+"Socialists wouldn't call it the end. But it's got to be the end until it
+can become the means."
+
+"Yes, but if you get in the habit of looking at it as an end, will there
+be anything left for it to be a means to?"
+
+"Why yes, those spiritual aspirations you mention."
+
+"Unless by that time the world's such an economic machine it doesn't want
+spiritual aspirations."
+
+"Well Heaven help the working man that's got them in the present economic
+machine," said Ferguson a little impatiently.
+
+She, too, moved impatiently. "Oh I don't know a thing about it. It's
+absurd for me to be talking about it."
+
+"Why I don't think it's at all absurd, only I don't think you see the
+thing clear to the end, and I wish you could talk to somebody who sees
+farther than I do. I'm new to it myself. Now there's a man doing a lot of
+boat repairing up here above the Island. I wish you could talk to him.
+He'd know just what you mean, and just how to meet you."
+
+"Oh, would he?" said Katie. "What's his name?"
+
+"Mann. Alan Mann."
+
+"Why, Katie," laughed Wayne, "it must be that he's that same mythical
+creature known as the man who mends the boats."
+
+"Yes," said Katie, "I fancy he's the very same mythical creature."
+
+"My little boy talks about him," Wayne explained.
+
+"Yes, he's the same one. I've seen him talking to your little boy and one
+of the soldiers. He's a queer genius."
+
+"In what way is he a queer genius?" asked Katie.
+
+"Why--I don't know. He's always got a way of looking at a thing that you
+hadn't seen yourself." He looked up with a little smile from the tool he
+was trying to adjust. "I'd like to have you tell him you were worrying
+about socialism hurting spiritual aspirations."
+
+"Would he annihilate me?"
+
+"No, he wouldn't want to annihilate you, if he thought you were trying to
+find out about things. He'd guide you."
+
+"Oh--so he's a guide, is he? Is he a spiritual or an economic guide?"
+she laughed.
+
+"I think he might combine them," he replied, laughing too.
+
+"He must be remarkable," said Kate.
+
+"He is remarkable, Miss Jones," gravely replied the admirer of the man
+who mended the boats. "I wish you could have heard him talking to a crowd
+of men last Sunday."
+
+"Dear me--is he a public speaker?"
+
+"Yes--in a way. And he writes things."
+
+Katie wanted to ask what things, but they were cut short by the entrance
+of Captain Prescott. It was curious how his entrance did cut them short.
+She smiled to herself, wondering what he would have thought of the
+conversation.
+
+He followed her to the door and inquired for Miss Forrest. His manner was
+constrained, but his eyes were begging for an explanation. He looked
+unhappy, and Katie hurried away from him. It seemed she could not bear to
+have any more unhappiness come pressing against her, even the
+unhappiness she was confident would pass away.
+
+In her mood of that day it seemed to Katie that the affairs of the world
+were too involved for any one to have a solution for them. Life surged in
+too fiercely--too uncontrollably--to be contained within a formula.
+
+As she continued her walk, winding in and out of the wooded paths, awe
+spread its great wings about her at thought of the complexity and the
+fathomlessness of the relationships of life. She had but a little peep
+into them, but that peep held the suggestion of limitlessness.
+
+Because a lonely girl in a barren little town in Indiana had dreamed
+dreams which life would not deliver to her, life now was beating in upon
+Katie Jones. Because Ann had been foiled in her quest for happiness,
+sobering shadows were falling across the sunny path along which Katie had
+tripped. Did life thwarted in one place take it out in another? Because
+Ann could not find joy was it to be that Katie could not have peace? Had
+Ann's yearning for love been the breath blowing to flame Katie's yearning
+for understanding? Because Ann could not dream her way to realities did
+it mean that Katie must fight her way to them?
+
+They were such big things--such resistless things--these wild new things
+which were sweeping in upon her. With the emotion of the world surging in
+and out like that how could any one claim to have a solution for the
+whole question of living?
+
+She seemed passing into a country too big and too dark for her of the
+sunny paths. She needed a guide. She grew lonely at thought of how badly
+she needed her guide.
+
+She turned for comfort to thought of the things she would do for Ann. She
+would pay it back in revealing to Ann the beauty of the world. She would
+assume the responsibility of the Something Somewhere. Perhaps in
+fulfilling a dream she would find a key to reality.
+
+She found pleasure in the vision of Ann in the old world cathedrals. How
+wisely they had builded--builders of those old cathedrals--in expressing
+religion through beauty. At peace in the beauty of form, might Ann not
+find an inner beauty? She believed Ann's nature to be an intensely
+religious one. How might Ann's soul not flower when she at last saw God
+as a God of beauty?
+
+Thus she soothed herself in building a future for Ann. Sought to appease
+those surgings of life with promise that Ann should at last find the
+loveliness of life.
+
+But in the end it led to a terrifying vision. A vision of thousands upon
+thousands of other dreamers of dreams whose soul stuff might be slowly
+ebbing away in long dreary days of putting suspenders in boxes. Of
+thousands of other girls who might be growing faint in operating the
+wires for life. Oh, she had power to fill Ann's life--but would that have
+power to still for her the mocking whispers from the dreams which had
+died slow deaths in all the other barren lives? Even though she took Ann
+from the crowd to a far green hill of happiness, would not Katie herself
+see from that far green hill all the other girls "called" to life, going
+forth as pilgrims with the lovely love-longing in their hearts only to
+find life waiting to seize them for the work of the woman who wore the
+white furs?
+
+A sob shook Katie. The woe of the world seemed surging just beneath
+her--rising so high that it threatened to suck her in.
+
+But because she was a fighter she mastered the sob and vowed that rather
+than be sucked in to the woe of the world she would find out about the
+world. Certainly she would sit apart no longer. She would study. She
+would see. She would live.
+
+Life had become a sterner and a bigger thing. She would meet it in
+a sterner and bigger way. To understand! That was the greatest
+thing in life.
+
+That passion to understand grew big within her. How could she hope to go
+laughing through a world which sobbed? How turn from life when she saw
+life suffering? Why she could not even turn from a little bird which she
+saw suffering!
+
+There was a noble wistfulness in her longing to talk again with the man
+who mended the boats.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+In temporary relaxation from the stress of that mood she was glad to see
+her friend Major Darrett.
+
+He did not suggest the woe of the world. Because the big new things had
+become--for the moment, at least--too much for her, there was rest in the
+shelter of the small familiar things.
+
+So much of the unknown had been beating against her that she was glad for
+a little laughing respite in the known.
+
+He stood for a world she knew how to deal with. In that he seemed to
+offer shelter; not that he would be able to do it for long.
+
+He always roused a particular imp in Katie which wanted to be
+flirtatious. She found now, with a certain relief, that the grave things
+of life had not exterminated that imp. She would scarcely have felt
+acquainted with herself had it perished.
+
+And because she was so pleased to find it alive she let it grow very
+live indeed.
+
+Ann and Worth had been gone for five days. Ann had seemed to like the
+idea of going. She said she would be glad to be alone for a time and
+"rest up," as she vaguely put it. Katie told her that when she came back
+they would make some plans; and she told her she was not to worry about
+things; that everything was going to be all right.
+
+Ann received it with childlike trust. She seemed to think that it was
+all in Katie's hands, to accept with a child's literalness that Katie
+would not let the old things come back, that she would "shut the door in
+their face."
+
+Other things were in Katie's hands that day: preparations for a big
+dinner they were giving that night.
+
+It was for some cavalry people who were stopping there. And in addition
+to the cavalry officers and their wives there was a staff officer from
+Washington who was valuable to Wayne just then. Katie was anxious that
+the dinner be a success. She was glad Major Darrett was there. He went a
+long way toward assuring its success.
+
+And Zelda Fraser was with the party. Katie had seen her for a moment that
+morning, and would see her again at night. She was stopping with Caroline
+Osborne, whom she had known at school.
+
+Zelda did not suggest the woe of the world. Neither did she suggest the
+dreams of the world.
+
+It was early in the afternoon and the Major and Katie were having
+a conference. He was acquainted with the palate of the visiting
+staff officer, and was assuring Katie that she was on the way to
+his good graces.
+
+They had gone into the library, where Katie was arranging flowers. He
+offered a suggestion there, too. He had an intuitive knowledge of such
+things, seemed to be guided by inner promptings as to which bowl should
+hold the lavender sweet peas and which the pink ones.
+
+Though Katie disputed his judgment, glad to be on ground where she could
+dispute with assurance. They argued it hotly, as if sweet peas were the
+most vital things in the world. It was good to be venting all one's
+feeling on things so tangible and knowable as sweet peas.
+
+Her dinner safe in the hands of experts, Katie made herself comfortable
+and told her friend the Major that she wished now to be put in a
+brilliant mood. That a brilliant mood was the one thing the skilled
+laborers in possession of her house could not furnish.
+
+He gallantly defied any laborer in the world to be so skilled as to get
+Katie out of a brilliant mood.
+
+She told him that was silly, that she had grown very stupid.
+
+He challenged her to prove it.
+
+Katie felt very much at home with him; not merely at home with him the
+individual, but comfortably at home with the things he represented. It
+gave her a nice homelike feeling to be flirting with him.
+
+And flirting with him herself, she grew interested in all those others
+who had flirted with him--she knew they were legion. She seemed to see
+them off there in the background--a lovely group of spoiled darlings. She
+did not suppose many of them were much the worse for having flirted with
+Major Darrett. Suddenly she laughed and told him she regarded him as one
+of the great educators of the age. He wanted to know in what way he was
+a great educator. Katie would not tell him. There ensued a gay discussion
+from which she emerged feeling as if she had had a cocktail.
+
+And looking that way; looking, at least so he seemed to think, from the
+manner in which he leaned forward regarding her--most attractive, her
+cheeks so pink, her eyes dancing a little dance of defiance at him, and
+on her lips a mocking little smile, more sophisticated than any smile he
+had ever seen before on Katie's lips. "Katie of the laughing eyes"--he
+had once called her. She was leaning back lazily, a suggestion of
+insolence in her assurance. As she leaned back that way he marked the
+lines of her figure as he had never marked them before. He had previously
+thought of Katie as a good build for golf. Now that did not seem to
+express the whole of it--and Katie seemed to know it would not express
+the whole of it. And in summarizing Katie as having a good build for golf
+he had not properly appraised Katie's foot. It was thrust out now from
+her very short skirt as if Katie were quite willing he should know it for
+a lovely foot. And her arm, which was hanging down from the side of the
+chair, seemed conscious of being something more than a good arm for golf.
+
+She looked so like a child, and yet so lurkingly like a woman. It gave
+him a new sense of Katie. It blew the warm breath of life over an idea he
+had had when he came there.
+
+He had just come from Zelda Fraser, having had luncheon at the
+Osbornes'. He had once thought Zelda stimulating. Now she did not seem
+at all stimulating in comparison with Katie. She was too obvious. That
+lurking something in Katie's eyes, that mysterious smile she had, made
+Katie seem subtle.
+
+If this were to be added to all her other charms--
+
+Katie had always seemed delightfully daring in an innocent sort of way.
+It seemed now she might be capable of being subtle in a sophisticated
+way. He had always thought of Katie as romping. A distinguished and quite
+individual form of romping. She even had a romping imagination. He loved
+her for her merriness, for her open sunniness. That had been an
+impersonal love, not very different from the way he might have loved a
+sister. In fact he had more than once wished Katie were his little sister
+instead of Wayne's.
+
+He did not wish that now.
+
+She became too fascinating and too desirable in her mysterious new
+complexity. There was zest in discovering Katie after he had known
+her so long.
+
+And her eyes and her smile seemed jeering at him for having been such a
+long while in discovering her.
+
+He wanted to kiss her. That mocking little smile seemed daring him to
+kiss her. And yet he did not dare to. It seemed part of Katie's lovely
+new complexity that she could invite and forbid at one and the same time.
+
+Now Zelda could not have done more than the inviting--and so many
+could invite.
+
+He rose and stood near her. "Katie, you don't mean to marry
+Prescott, do you?"
+
+She clapped her hands above her head and laughed like a child immensely
+tickled about something.
+
+He laughed, too, and then asked to be informed what he was laughing at.
+
+"Oh, you're just laughing because I am," laughed Katie.
+
+"Then may I ask, mysterious one, what you're laughing at?"
+
+"Oh I'm laughing at a tumble I once took. 'Twas such a tumble."
+
+"I'd like to tumble to the tumble."
+
+"You would like it. You'd love it."
+
+"I hadn't thought," said the Major, "that when I asked if you meant to
+marry Prescott I was classifying with the great humorists of all time."
+
+"And I hadn't thought," she returned, "that when I thought Prescott meant
+to marry me I was classifying with the great tumblers of all time!"
+
+Suddenly she stopped laughing. "No, I don't mean to marry Harry, and I
+can further state with authority that Harry doesn't mean to marry me."
+
+The laughter went from even her eyes--thinking, perhaps, of whom Harry
+did mean to marry.
+
+But she was not going to let herself become grave. If she grew quiet she
+would know again about the woe of the world--surging right underneath.
+The only way not to know it was underneath was to keep merrily dancing
+away in one's place on top of it. She made a curious little gesture of
+flicking something from her hand and whistled a romping little tune.
+
+He stood there surveying her. "It wouldn't do at all for you to marry
+Prescott, Katie. He's a likeable enough fellow, but with it all something
+of a duffer."
+
+"Just what kind of man," asked Katie demurely, "would you say I had
+better marry?"
+
+He sat down in a chair nearer her. "Just what kind of man would you like
+to marry?"
+
+"How do you know," she asked, still demurely, "that I would like to
+marry any?"
+
+"Oh you must have a guide, Katie. You must be guided through this
+wicked world."
+
+She bit her lip and turned away when he told her she must have a guide.
+
+But she turned back, and seriously. "Is it a wicked world?"
+
+With that he ventured to pat the hand now lying on the arm of the chair
+so near him. "Well you'll never know it, if it is. We'll keep it all from
+you, Katie. You're safe."
+
+Katie pulled her hand away petulantly. "If there's anything I don't want
+to be," she said, "it's safe."
+
+That seemed to amuse him. "I only meant," he laughed, "safe from the
+great outer world."
+
+"Tell me," said Katie, "what's in the great outer world?"
+
+He sat there smiling at her as one would smile at a dear
+inquisitive child.
+
+"Have you made many excursions into the great outer world?" she
+asked boldly.
+
+"Oh yes," he replied lightly, "I've been something of an explorer. All
+men, you know, Katie, are born explorers. Though for the most part I must
+say I find our own little world the more attractive."
+
+Then he surprised her. "Katie, would you think a man a brute to propose
+to a girl on the day she was giving an important dinner?"
+
+But right there she pulled herself in. "No more tumbles!" thought Katie.
+
+"It would seem rather inconsiderate, wouldn't it? Such a man wouldn't
+seem to have a true sense of values."
+
+"Well, dinner or no dinner, the man I have in mind has a true sense of
+values. He has a true sense of values because he knows Katherine
+Wayneworth Jones for the most desirable thing in all the world."
+
+It did surprise her, and the surprise grew. None of them had thought of
+Major Darrett as what they called a marrying man.
+
+And on the heels of the surprise came a certain sense of triumph. Katie
+knew that any of the girls in what he called their little world would be
+looking upon it as a moment of triumph, and there was triumph in gaining
+what others would regard as triumph.
+
+"How old are you, Katie?" he asked.
+
+She told him.
+
+"Twenty-five. And I'm forty-one. Is that prohibitive?"
+
+She looked at him, thinking how lightly the years had touched him--how
+lightly, in all probability, they would touch him. He had distinctly the
+military bearing. He would have that same bearing at sixty. And that
+same charm. He was one to whom experience gave the gift of charm more
+insidiously than youth could give it.
+
+Life would be more possible with him than with any man she knew within
+the enclosure. If one were to go dancing and smiling and flirting through
+the world Major Darrett would be the best possible man to go with.
+
+As she looked at him, smiling at her half tenderly and half humorously,
+life with Major Darrett presented itself as such an attractive thing that
+there was almost pain in the thought of not being able to take it.
+
+For deep within her she never questioned not being able to take it. But
+for the moment--
+
+"You see, Katie," he was saying, "I would be the best possible one for
+you to be married to, because you could go right on having
+flirtations. Of course I needn't tell you, Katie dear, that you're a
+flirt. The trouble with your marrying most fellows would be that they
+wouldn't like it."
+
+"And of course," she replied, "I would be a good one for you to marry
+because having my own flirtations I wouldn't be in a position to be
+critical about yours."
+
+He laughed quite frankly.
+
+Katie leaned back and sat there smiling at him, that new baffling smile
+he found so alluring.
+
+"But do you know, Katie, I think, for a long time, anyway, we could keep
+busy flirting with each other."
+
+"And we would keep all the busier," she said, "knowing that the minute
+we stopped flirting with each other one of us would get busy flirting
+with somebody else."
+
+He laughed delightedly. "Katie, where did you learn it was very fetching
+to say outrageous things so demurely?"
+
+"Tell me," said Katie, more seriously, "why do you want to marry?"
+
+"Until about an hour ago I wanted to marry--oh for the most bromidic of
+reasons. Just because, in the natural course of events, it seemed the
+next thing for me to do. I'll even be quite frank and confess I had
+thought of you in that bromidic version of it. Had thought of it as
+'eminently suitable'--also, eminently desirable. We'd like to do the same
+things. We'd get on--be good fellows together. But now I want to
+marry--and I want to marry _you_--because I think you're quite the most
+fascinating thing in all the world!"
+
+Lightly and yet seriously he spoke of things--of his own prospects. She
+knew how good they were. Of where and how they would probably live;--a
+pleasant picture it was he could draw. It would mean life along the
+sunny paths. And very sunny indeed it seemed they would be--if possible
+at all. Certainly one would never have to explain any of one's jokes to
+Major Darrett.
+
+For just a moment she let herself drift into it. And knowing she was
+drifting, and not knowing it was for just the moment, he rose and bent
+over her chair.
+
+"Katie," he whispered, and there was passion in his voice, "I think I
+can make you fall in love with me."
+
+The little imp in Katie took possession. And something deeper than the
+little imp stirred vaguely at sound of that thing in his voice. She
+raised her face so that it was turned up to him. "You think you could?
+Now I wonder."
+
+"Oh you wonder, do you--you exasperating little wretch! Well just give me
+a chance--"
+
+But suddenly he was standing at attention, his face colorless. Katie
+jumped up guiltily, and there leaning against the door--all huddled down
+and terrible looking--was Ann.
+
+"Why, Katie," she whispered thickly--"_Katie_! But you told me--you
+_promised_ me--that you would _shut the door in his face_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+It took her a number of seconds to get the fact that they must know
+each other.
+
+And even then she could get no grip on the situation. She was too shaken
+by having jumped--as though she were some vulgar housemaid!
+
+And why was Ann looking like that! She looked dreadful--huddled up that
+way as if some one was going to beat her!
+
+"Why you can't know each other," said Katie wildly. "How could you know
+each other? Where would you know each other? And if you _do_ know each
+other,"--turning upon him furiously--"need we all act like thieves?"
+
+He tried to speak, but seemed unable to. He had lost command of himself,
+save in so far as standing very straight was concerned.
+
+She wished Ann would stand up! It gave her such an awful sense of shame
+to see Ann huddled like that.
+
+"Katie," Ann whispered, "you told me--"
+
+"I never told you I'd shut the door in Major Darrett's face!" said Katie
+harshly. "And what are you talking about? What does this all mean?"
+
+He had recovered himself. "Why it merely means, Katie, that we--as you
+surmised--at one time--knew each other. The--the acquaintance
+terminated--not pleasantly. That's all. A slight surprise for the
+moment. No harm done."
+
+Then Ann did stand straight. "It means," she said shrilly, "that if I had
+never known him"--pointing at him--"you would never have found me there."
+She pointed down toward the river. "Oh no, no harm done, of course--No
+harm done--"
+
+"Please let us try and keep very quiet," said Katie coldly. "It is--it is
+vulgar enough at best. Let us be as quiet--as decent as we can."
+
+Ann crouched down again as though struck.
+
+Then Katie laughed, bitterly. "Why really, it's quite as good as a play,
+isn't it? It's quite a scene, I'm sure."
+
+"It needn't be," said he soothingly, and relaxing a little. "I own I was
+startled for the moment, and--discomfited. But you were quite
+right--we'll go into no hysterics. What I can't understand"--looking from
+one to the other--"is what she's doing _here_."
+
+Katie's head went up. "She's here, I'll have you know, as my friend. Just
+as you're here as my friend."
+
+She thought Ann was going to fall, and her heart softened a little.
+"Suppose you go up to my room, Ann. Lie down. Just--just lie down. Keep
+quiet. Why did you come home? Is something wrong?"
+
+Ann whispered that Worth had a sore throat. She had a chance to come down
+in an automobile. She thought she had better. She was sorry she had.
+
+"All right," said Katie. "It's all right. Just go lie down. I'll look
+after Worth--and you--in a minute."
+
+Ann left the room and Katie turned to the Major. "Well?"
+
+"You're so sensible, Katie," he said hurriedly, "in feeling the thing to
+do is make no fuss about things. Nothing is to be gained--But for God's
+sake, Katie, what is she doing here? Where did _you_ know her?"
+
+"Oh you tell first," said Katie, smiling a hard smile. "You tell where
+you found her, then I'll tell where I found her."
+
+"Really--really," he said stiffly, "I must refuse to discuss such a
+matter with _you_. I can only repeat--she has no business here."
+
+"Then pray why have you any business here?"
+
+He flushed angrily. But restrained himself and said persuasively: "Why,
+Katie, she's not one of us."
+
+"She's one of _me_," said Katie. "She's my friend."
+
+"I can only say again," he said shortly, "that she has no business to
+be."
+
+"As I am to be kept so safe from the wicked world," said Katie
+stingingly, "I presume it is not proper you discuss the matter with me. I
+take it, however, that she was one of those 'excursions' into the great
+outer world?"
+
+"Well," he said defiantly, "and what if she was? She was willing to be, I
+guess. She wasn't knocked down with a club."
+
+"Oh, no! Oh, my no! That wouldn't be your method. And when one is tired
+of exursions--I suppose one is at perfect liberty to abandon them--?"
+
+"Nonsense! You can't trump up anything of that sort. She wasn't
+'abandoned.' She left in the night."
+
+He colored. "I beg your pardon. But as long as we're speaking
+frankly--"
+
+"Oh pray," said Katie, "let's not be overly delicate in this delicate
+little matter!"
+
+"Very well then. Her coming was her own choice. Her going away was her
+own choice. I can see that I have no great responsibility in the matter."
+
+"Why how clever you must be," said Katie, all the while smiling that hard
+smile, "to be able to argue it like that."
+
+He was standing there with folded arms. "I think I was very decent to
+her. All things considered--in view of the nature of the affair--I
+consider that I was very decent."
+
+Katie laughed. "Maybe you were. I found her in the very act of
+committing suicide."
+
+He paled, but quickly recovered himself. "That was not my affair. There
+must have been--something afterward."
+
+"Maybe. I'm sure I don't know. But you were the beginning, weren't you?"
+Suddenly she buried her face in her hands. "Oh I didn't think--I didn't
+think it could get in here! It's everywhere! It's everywhere! It's
+_getting_ me!"
+
+"Katie--dear Katie," he murmured, "don't. We'll get you out of this. You
+wanted to be kind. It was just a mistake of yours. We'll fix it up. Don't
+cry." And he put an arm about her.
+
+She stood before him with clenched hands, eyes blazing. "Don't touch me!
+Don't you touch me!" And she left him.
+
+In the hall Nora stopped her to say there were not enough champagne
+glasses. She made no reply. Champagne glasses--!
+
+She looked after Worth. Then she went to Ann.
+
+"Well, Ann," she began, her voice high pitched and unsteady, "this is
+about the limit, isn't it?"
+
+"Oh Katie," moaned Ann, "you told me--you told me--you understood. Why,
+Katie--you must have known there was some one."
+
+"Oh I knew there was some one, all right," said Katie, her voice getting
+higher and higher, her cheeks more and more red--"only I just hadn't
+figured, you see, on its being some one I knew! Why how under the sun,"
+she asked, laughing wildly, "did you ever meet Major Darrett?"
+
+"I--I'll try to tell you," faltered Ann miserably. "I want to. I want to
+make you understand. Katie!--I'll die if you don't understand!"
+
+She looked so utterly wretched that Katie made heroic effort to get
+herself under control--curb that fearful desire to laugh. "I will try,"
+she said quietly as she could. "I _will_ try."
+
+"Why, Katie," Ann began, "does it make so much difference--just because
+you know him?"
+
+"It makes all the difference! Can't you see--why it makes it so vulgar."
+
+Ann threw back her head. "Just the same--it wasn't vulgar. What I felt
+wasn't vulgar. Why, Katie," she cried appealingly, "it was my Something
+Somewhere! You didn't think that vulgar!"
+
+"Oh no," laughed Katie, "not before I knew it was Major Darrett! But tell
+me--I've got to know now. What is it? Where did you meet him? Just how
+bad is it, anyhow?"
+
+It must have been desperation led Ann to spare neither Katie nor herself.
+"I met him," she said baldly, "one night as I was standing on the corner
+waiting for a car. He had an automobile. He asked me to get in it--and I
+did. And that--began it."
+
+Katie stepped back from her in horror, the outrage she felt stamped all
+too plainly on her face. "And you call _that_ not vulgar? Why it was
+_common_. It was _low_."
+
+Then Ann turned. "Was it? Oh I don't know that you need talk. I wouldn't
+say much--if I were you. I guess I saw the look on his face when I came
+in. Don't think for a minute I don't know that look. _You got it there_.
+And let me tell you another thing. Just let me tell you another thing!
+Whatever I did--whatever I did--I know I never had the look you did when
+I came in! I never had that look of fooling with things!"
+
+Katie was white--powerless--with rage. "_You_ dare speak to _me_ like
+that!" she choked. "You--!"
+
+And all control gone she rushed blindly from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+She had no idea how long she had been walking. She was conscious of being
+glad that there was so big a place for walking, that walking was not a
+preposterous thing to be doing. She passed several groups of soldiers.
+They were reassuring; they looked so much in the natural order of things
+and gave no sign of her being out of that order.
+
+Though she knew she was out of it. It was dizzying--that feeling of
+having lost herself. She had never known it before.
+
+After she had walked very fast for what seemed a long time she seemed
+able to gather at least part of her forces back under control.
+
+That blinding sense of everything being scattered, of her being
+powerless, was passing.
+
+And the first thing sanity brought was the suggestion that Ann, too,
+might be like that. Once before Ann had been "scattered" that way--oh she
+understood it now as she had not been able to do then. And perhaps Ann
+would have less power to gather herself back--
+
+She grew frightened. She turned toward home, walking fast as she
+could--worried to find herself so far away.
+
+Major Darrett stepped out from the library to speak to her, but she
+hurried past him up the stairs.
+
+Ann was not in the room where she had left her.
+
+She looked through the other rooms. She called to her.
+
+Then it must be--she told herself--all the while fear growing larger in
+her heart--that Ann, too, had gone out for a walk.
+
+"Worth," she asked, grotesquely overdoing unconcern, "where's Miss Ann?
+Has she gone for a walk?"
+
+"Why, Aunt Kate, she was called away."
+
+"Called _away_?" whispered Katie. "Called where?"
+
+"She said she was called away. She's gone."
+
+"But she's coming back? When did she say, dear," she pleaded, "that she
+would be back?"
+
+"I don't know, Aunt Kate. She felt awful bad because she had to go. She
+came and kissed me--she kissed me and kissed me--and said she hated to
+leave me--but that she had to go. She kept saying she had to."
+
+In the hall was Nora. "Nora," asked Katie, standing with her back to her,
+"what is it about Miss Forrest?"
+
+"She was called away, Miss Kate. A telegram. I didn't see no boy--"
+
+"They must have 'phoned it," said Katie sharply.
+
+"Yes'm. I didn't hear the 'phone. But I was busy. I'm so upset, Miss
+Kate, about them champagne glasses. We've telephoned over the river--"
+
+"Never mind the champagne glasses! What about Miss Forrest? How did she
+go? When did she go?"
+
+"She went in Mr. Osborne's automobile. Miss Osborne sent you some
+beautiful flowers, Miss Kate. Oh they're just lovely!"
+
+"Oh, I don't care anything about flowers! You say Ann went in the
+machine?"
+
+"Yes'm. She told the chauffeur--he brought the flowers--that big colored
+man, you know, Miss Kate--that she was called away, and would he take
+her to the station. And he said sure he would--and so they went. But,
+Miss Kate--it's most five o'clock--what will we do about those two
+champagne glasses!"
+
+"Merciful heavens, Nora! Stop talking about them! I don't care what you
+do about them!"
+
+She went down to the library. "Look here," she said to the Major, "what
+is this? What have you done? Where's Ann gone?"
+
+"I don't know a thing about it. I went over to the office--an
+appointment--and when I came back--hurried back because I was worried
+about you--I saw her going away in the Osborne car."
+
+"And never tried to stop her?"
+
+"See here, Katie. Why should I stop her? Best thing you can do is
+let her go."
+
+"Do you know--do you know," choked Katie--"that she may kill herself?"
+
+He laughed. "Oh I guess not. Calm down, Katie. She had her wits about
+her, all right. I heard her tell the man to drive her to the station. She
+had sense enough to take advantage of the car, you see. I guess she knows
+the ropes. Don't think she has much notion of killing herself."
+
+"Oh you don't. Much you know about it! You with your fine noble
+understanding of life!" She turned away, sobbing. "What shall I do? What
+_shall_ I do?"
+
+But in a moment she stopped. "The thing for me to do," she said, "is
+telephone the Osbornes' chauffeur."
+
+Which she did. Yes, he had taken the young lady to the station. He didn't
+know where she was going. He just pulled in to the station and then
+pulled right out again--she told him there was nothing more to do. He
+didn't believe she bought a ticket. He saw her walking out to get a
+train. No, he didn't know what train. There were two or three trains
+standing there.
+
+"What can I do?" Katie kept murmuring frantically.
+
+Suddenly her face lighted. She sat there thinking for a moment, then
+called her brother's office. Wayne, she was glad to find, was not there.
+She asked if she might speak to Mr. Ferguson.
+
+"Mr. Ferguson," she said, "this is--this is Captain Jones' sister. I want
+for a very particular--a very imperative reason--to speak at once to
+the--to your friend--that man--why the man that mends the boats, you
+know. Could you get word for him to come here--here, to my house--right
+away? Tell him it's very--oh _very_ important. Tell him Miss Jones says
+she--needs him."
+
+Ferguson said it was just quitting time. He'd go up there on his wheel.
+He thought he could find him. He would send him right down.
+
+She admired the way he controlled what must have been his astonishment.
+
+The man who mended the boats would come. He would know what to do. He
+would help her. She would keep as calm as she could until he got there.
+
+But surely--surely--Ann wouldn't go away and leave her without a word!
+Ann couldn't be so cruel as to let her worry like that. Why of
+course--Ann had left a note for her.
+
+So she looked for the note--tossed everything in the room topsy-turvey.
+Even looked in the closet.
+
+Again she heard Nora in the hall. "Nora," she said, and Katie's face
+was white and pleading, "didn't Miss Ann say anything about leaving
+me a note?"
+
+"Why yes, Miss Kate--yes--sure she did. I was so upset about them
+champagne glasses--"
+
+"Well, where is it? Oh, hurry, Nora. Tell me."
+
+"Why it's in the desk, Miss Kate. She said you was to look in the desk."
+
+She ran to it with a sob. "Nora, how could you let me--"
+
+Nora was saying again that she was so worried about the champagne
+glasses--
+
+The desk, of course, would be the last place one would think of looking
+for a note!
+
+She found, and with trembling fingers smoothed out the note; it had been
+crumpled rather than folded. It was brief, and so written she could
+scarcely read it.
+
+"You see, Katie, you _can't_--you simply _can't_. So I'm going. When you
+come back, you won't want me to. That's why I've got to go now. I'd tell
+you--only I don't know. I'll get a train--just any train. I can't write.
+Because for one thing I haven't time--and for another if I began to say
+things I'd begin to cry--and then I wouldn't go. I've got to keep just
+this feeling--the one I told you about its _having_ to be--
+
+"Katie, you're not like the rest of your world, but it is your world--and
+see what you get when you try to be any different from it!
+
+"Oh Katie--I didn't think I'd be leaving like _this_. I didn't think I'd
+ever say to you--"
+
+There it ended.
+
+"Miss Kate," Nora said, "Major Darrett wants to know if he may speak to
+you in the library."
+
+She went down mechanically.
+
+"Now, Katie," he began quietly and authoritatively, "there are several
+orders you must give, several things you must attend to, in relation
+to your dinner. Things seem a little disorganized, and it's getting
+late, and it won't do, you know, to get these people upset. Now Nora
+tells me that through some complication or other you're two champagne
+glasses short."
+
+Katie was staring at him. "And is _that_ all that matters? Two champagne
+glasses short! And here a life--Why what kind of people are we?"
+
+"Katie," he said, his voice well controlled, "we're just that kind of
+people. No matter what's at stake--no matter what we're thinking about
+things--or about each other--the thing we've got to do now--you know
+it--and you're going to do it--is go ahead with this affair."
+
+"I'm not going to have it! Why what do you think I'm made of? I won't.
+Telephone them. Call it off. I tell you I can't."
+
+"Katie, you think you can't, and yet you know you will. I know exactly
+what you're made of. I know what your father was made of. I know what
+your mother was made of. I know that no matter what it costs
+_you_--you'll go on as if nothing had occurred. Now will you telephone
+Prescott, or shall I? Ask him about the glasses. And if he can't do
+anything for you you'll have to call up Zelda at Miss Osborne's and tell
+the girls they can't come unless they each bring a glass. I'll do it if
+you want me to. They'll think it a great lark, you know, having to bring
+their own glasses or getting no champagne."
+
+"Yes," whispered Katie, "they'll think it a great lark. For that
+matter--everything's a great lark."
+
+She sank to a chair. Her tears were falling as she said again that
+everything was a great lark. He paid no attention to her but went to the
+telephone.
+
+But the tears were interrupted. "Miss Kate," said Nora, "can you come and
+look at the table a minute? They want to know--"
+
+She dried her eyes as best she could and went and looked at the table.
+
+She kept on looking at things--doing things--until she heard the bell.
+
+"If that's some one for me, Nora," she said, "show him in here, and
+don't interrupt me while he's here." She passed into a small room they
+used as a den.
+
+He came to her there. And when she saw that it was indeed he she
+broke down.
+
+"Something is the matter?" he asked gently. "You wanted me? You
+sent for me?"
+
+She raised her head. "Yes. I sent for you. I need you."
+
+It was evident she needed some one. He would scarcely have known her for
+Katie--so white, so shaken. "I'm glad you sent for me," he said simply.
+"Now won't you tell me what I can do?"
+
+"She's gone," whispered Katie.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I don't know--I don't know where. Away. On a train. Some train. Any
+train. Somewhere. I don't know where. I thought--oh you'll find her for
+me--won't you? You _will_ find her--won't you?"
+
+She had stretched out her hands, and he took them, holding them strongly
+in both of his. "Don't you want to tell me what you know? I can't help
+you unless you tell me."
+
+Briefly she told him--wrenched the heart out of it in a few words. "You
+see, I failed," she concluded, looking up at him with swimming eyes. "The
+very first thing--the very first test--I failed. I wanted to do so
+much--thought I understood so well--oh I was so proud of the way I
+understood! And then just the minute it came up against _my_ life--"
+
+Her head went down to her hands, and because he was holding them it was
+upon his hands rather than hers it rested, Katie's head with its gold
+brown hair all disorderly.
+
+"Don't," he whispered, as she seemed breaking her heart with it. "Why
+don't you know all the world's like that? Don't you know we all can be
+fine and free until it comes up against _our_ lives?"
+
+"I was so _hard_!" she sobbed.
+
+"Yes--I know. We are hard--when it's our lives are touched. Don't cry,
+Katie." He spoke her name timidly and lingeringly. "Isn't that what life
+is? Just one long thing of trying and failing? But going on trying again!
+That's what you'll do."
+
+"If you can find her for me! But I never can hold up my head again--never
+believe in myself--never do anything--why I never can laugh again--not
+really laugh--if you don't find her for me."
+
+A curious look passed over his face with those last words. "Well if
+that's the case," he said, with a strange little laugh of his own, "I've
+got to find her."
+
+They talked of things. He would go to the station. He would do what he
+could. If he thought anything to be gained by it he would go on to
+Chicago. He had to go in a few days anyhow, he explained, to see about
+some work, and if it didn't seem a mere wild goose chase he would go
+that night.
+
+The change in Katie, the life which came back to her eyes, rewarded him.
+
+"I'd go with you to the station," she said, "only we're giving a big
+dinner to-night."
+
+She thought his face darkened. "Oh yes, I know. But that's the kind of
+person I am. We go on with the dinner--no matter what's happening.
+It's--our way."
+
+He seemed to be considering it as a curious phenomenon. "Yes, I know it
+is. And you can't help that either, can you? So you're going to be very
+festive in this house to-night?"
+
+"Oh _very_ festive in this house to-night. Some army people are here from
+Washington. We're going to have a gorgeous dinner, and I'm going to wear
+a gorgeous gown and drink champagne and try and smile myself into the
+good graces of a man who can do things for my brother and be--oh _so_
+clever and festive."
+
+He looked at her as if by different route he had come again to that thing
+of pitying her; only along this other route the quality of the pity had
+changed and there was in it now a tender sadness. "It's not so simple a
+matter for you, is it--this 'being free'? You're of the bound, too,
+aren't you? And you've become conscious of your chains. There's all the
+hope and all the tragedy of it in that." He took an impulsive step toward
+her and smiled at her appealingly, a little mistily, as he said: "Only
+please don't tell me you're not going to laugh any more."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+As a matter of fact Katie did laugh a great deal that night. At least it
+passed for laughter, and the man who was worth cultivating for Wayne
+seemed to find it most attractive. It was evident to them all that Katie
+was getting on famously with him.
+
+It was well that she was, for Wayne himself seemed making little headway.
+Before dinner Katie had told him briefly that Ann had come down with
+Worth (whose sore throat didn't seem serious, after all) and then had
+been called away. She said she couldn't talk about it then; she would
+tell him later.
+
+But though they had a quiet host they had a vivid and a brilliant
+hostess. Those who knew Katie best, Mrs. Prescott in particular, kept
+watching her in wonderment. She had never known Katie to vie with Zelda
+Fraser in saying those daring things. Katie, though so merry, had seemed
+a different type. But to-night Katie and Zelda and Major Darrett kept
+things very lively.
+
+Katie was telling her distinguished guest the tale of the champagne
+glasses. "Just fancy," she said, "here was I, giving a dinner for
+you--and it looked as if somebody would have to turn teetotaler or drink
+out of the bottle! After I finally got it straightened out I told Zelda
+she must keep her hand as much as possible on the stem of her glass so
+it would not be noted she was drinking from gothic architecture and the
+rest of us from classic."
+
+"And you may have observed," blithely observed Zelda, "that keeping my
+hand on the stem of my glass is an order I am not loathe to obey--be it
+any old architecture."
+
+They laughed. Zelda was the daughter of a general, and could say very
+much what she pleased and be laughed at as amusing.
+
+It came to Katie in what large measure they all could do very much as
+they pleased. It was a game they played, and great liberty was accorded
+them in that game so long as they took their liberty in accordance with
+the prescribed rules of that game. But they guarded their own privileges
+with an intolerance for all those outside their game who would take
+privileges of their own. That--labeled a respect for good form--was in
+reality their method of self-defense.
+
+She looked at Zelda Fraser--Zelda with her bold black eyes, her red
+cheeks which she made still redder--and her _hair_--as long as people
+were "wearing" hair Zelda wore a little more than any one else. Nothing
+about her suggested anything so redeeming as a quest for Something
+Somewhere. No veiled splendor of a dream hovered tenderly over Zelda.
+Watching her as she bantered with Major Barrett it grew upon Katie as
+one of the grotesque things of the world that Zelda should be within and
+Ann without.
+
+Major Barrett had remained. It was Ann who had gone. Yet it was Ann had
+dreamed the dream. He who had made the "excursion" despoiling the dream.
+It was Ann had been "called." He who had preyed upon--cheated--that call.
+
+Yet she had not sent him away. She was too much in the game for that.
+She had not seemed to have the power. Certainly she had not had the
+wit nor the courage. He had remained and taken command. She had done
+as he told her.
+
+He was smiling approvingly upon her now, manifestly proud of the way
+Katie was playing the game.
+
+Seeing it as a thing to win his approval she could with difficulty
+continue it. She was thankful that the dinner itself had drawn to a
+close.
+
+Later, on the porch, Caroline Osborne asked for Ann. Zelda and Major
+Darrett and Harry Prescott were in the group at the time.
+
+"You mean she is not coming back?" she pursued in response to Katie's
+statement that Ann had been called away.
+
+"I don't know," said Katie. "I'm afraid not."
+
+"Who is she, Katie?" Zelda asked.
+
+"No one you know."
+
+Zelda turned to Prescott. "You know her?"
+
+"Yes," he said. His voice told Katie how hard he was finding it just then
+to play the game.
+
+"Like her?"
+
+"Yes," he replied.
+
+Zelda threw back her head in an impertinent way of hers that was called
+engaging. "Love her?"
+
+He stepped nearer Katie, as if for protection. His smile was a
+dead smile.
+
+"Really, Zelda," said Katie, in laughing protest.
+
+"I just wondered," said Zelda, "if she was going to marry into the army."
+
+Katie saw Major Darrett's smile.
+
+"If she did," she said, "the army would gain something that might
+do it good."
+
+Major Darrett was staring at her speechlessly. Harry gratefully. "You're
+very fond of her?" said Caroline Osborne in her sweet-toned way.
+
+"Very," said Kate in way less sweet.
+
+"Too bad we missed her," said Zelda, "especially if she would do us good.
+Now Cal here's going in for doing good, too. Only she's not trying to do
+it to the army. She's doing it to the working people."
+
+"Get the distinction," laughed the Major.
+
+"I must get hold of some stunt like that," said Zelda. "The world's
+getting stuntier and stuntier." She turned to Major Darrett. "Whom do you
+think I could do good to?"
+
+"Me," he said, and they strolled laughingly away together.
+
+A few minutes later Katie found herself alone with Captain Prescott.
+
+"Katie," he asked pleadingly, "where has Ann gone?"
+
+"She's been called away, Harry. She's--gone away."
+
+"But won't she be back?"
+
+Katie turned away. "I don't know. I'm afraid not."
+
+"Katie," he besought, "won't you help me? Won't you tell me where I can
+find her? I know--something's the matter. I know--something's strange.
+But I want to see her! I want to find her!"
+
+"I want to see her!--I want to find her!"--It invaded the chamber in
+Katie's heart she would keep inexorably shut. She dared not speak.
+
+But he was waiting, and she was forced to speak. "Harry, I'm afraid
+you'll have to forget Ann," she said unsteadily. "I'm afraid you'll have
+to--" Because she could not go on, sure if she did she would not be able
+to go on with the evening, she laughed. "I'll tell you what you do," she
+said briskly. "Marry Caroline Osborne. She's going to have heaps of money
+and will go in for philanthropy. 'Twill be quite stunty. Don't you see,
+even Zelda thinks it stunty?"
+
+He stepped back. "I had thought, Katie,"--and his voice pierced her
+armor--"that you were kind."
+
+She dared not let in anything so human as a hurt. "Well that's where
+you're wrong. I'm not kind," she said harshly.
+
+"So I see," he answered unsteadily.
+
+But of a sudden the fact that he had been drawn to Ann drew her
+irresistibly to him. He had been part of all those wonderful days--days
+of dream and play, or waking and wondering. She remembered that other
+night they had stood on the porch speaking of Ann--the very night she had
+become Ann. That fact that he had accepted her as Ann--cared for
+her--made it impossible to harden her heart against him. "Oh Harry," she
+said, voice shaking, "I'm sorry. So sorry. It's my fault--and I'm sorry.
+I didn't want you to be hurt. I didn't want--anybody to be hurt."
+
+Some one called to him and he had to turn away. She stepped into the
+shadow and had a moment to herself.
+
+What did it _mean_--she wondered. That one was indeed bound hand and foot
+and brain and heart and spirit?
+
+What had she done save prove that she could do nothing?
+
+Ann had been driven away. And in her house now were Zelda Fraser and
+Caroline Osborne and Major Darrett and all those others who were not
+dreamers of dreams. And the dream betrayed--she felt one with _them_.
+
+For she had turned the dream out of doors with Ann: the wonderful dream
+which sheltered the heart of reality, dream through which waking had
+come, from which all the long dim paths of wondering had opened--dream
+through which self had called.
+
+And what was there left?
+
+A house of hollow laughter was left--of pretense--"stunts"--of prescribed
+rules and intolerance with all breakers of rules even though the breakers
+of rules were dreamers of dreams.
+
+With a barely repressed sob she remembered what Ann had said in her story
+of her dog. "I could have stood my own lonesomeness. But what I couldn't
+stand was thinking about him.... I couldn't keep from thinking things
+that tortured me."
+
+It was that gnawed at the heart of it.... How go to bed that night
+without knowing that Ann had a bed? She had loved Ann because Ann needed
+her, been tender to her because Ann was her charge. She yearned for her
+now in fearing for her. More sickening than the pain of having failed was
+the pain of wondering where Ann would get her breakfast. Tears which she
+had been able to hold back even under the shame of her infidelity came
+uncontrollably with the simple thought that she might never do Ann's hair
+for her again.
+
+It seemed to Katie then that the one thing she could not do was go back
+to her guests.
+
+A boy was coming on a bicycle. He had a letter for Katie.
+
+She excused herself and went to the little room to read it--the same
+little room where they had been that afternoon.
+
+It was but a hurried note. He had found nothing at the station except
+that the Chicago train was probably there at the time. Doubtless she had
+taken it. He had taken a chance and wired the train asking her to wire
+Katie immediately. That was all he could think of to do. He was taking
+the night train for Chicago--not that he knew of anything to do there,
+but perhaps she would like to feel there was some one there. He would
+have to go soon anyhow--might as well be that night. He would be there
+three or four days. He told Katie where to address him. He would do
+anything she asked.
+
+He advised her, for the time, to remain where she was. Probably word
+would come to her there. She might be able to do more from there than
+elsewhere. It was not even certain Ann had gone to Chicago--by no
+means certain. And even if she had--how find her there if she did not
+wish to be found?
+
+At the last: "I suppose you're very gay at your dinner just now.
+That must be tough business--being gay. Don't let it harden your
+heart--as gayety like that could so easily do. And remember--you're
+_going on!_ You're not a quitter. And it's only the quitters stop
+when they fall down."
+
+Below, shyly off in one corner, written very lightly as if he scarcely
+dared write it, she found: "You don't know what a wonderful thing it is
+to me just to know that you are in the world."
+
+Katie went back to her guests with less gayety but more poise.
+
+Major Darrett had remained for a good-night drink with Wayne. He came out
+to Katie as she was going up stairs.
+
+"I was proud of you, Katie," he said.
+
+"I take no pride in your approval!"
+
+"You made a great hit, Katie."
+
+"Not with myself."
+
+"Katie," he suddenly demanded, "what were you up to? I can't get the run
+of it. For heaven's sake, what did you mean?"
+
+"You wouldn't understand," she murmured wearily, for she was indeed so
+very weary then.
+
+"Well, I'm afraid I wouldn't. I don't want to be harsh--when you've had
+such a hard day, but it looks to me as if you broke the rules."
+
+"What rules?"
+
+"Our rules. You didn't play the game fair, Katie--presenting her here. I
+never would have done that."
+
+"No," she said, "I know. You put what you call the rules of life so far
+above life itself."
+
+"And look here, Katie, what's this about Prescott? I'm not going to have
+him hurt. If he doesn't know the situation, and has any thought of
+marrying her--why I'm in honor bound to tell him."
+
+That fired her. "Oh you are, are you? Well if your honor moves you to
+that I'll have a few things to say about that same 'honor' of yours! To
+our distinguished guest of this evening, for instance," she laughed.
+
+He lost color, but quickly recovered himself. "Oh come now, Katie, you
+and I are not going to quarrel."
+
+"No, not if you can help it. That wouldn't be your way. But do you know
+what I think of the 'game' you play?"
+
+She had gone a little way up the stairs, and was standing looking back at
+him. Her eyes were shining feverishly.
+
+"I think it's a game for cheats."
+
+He did go colorless at that. "That's not the sort of thing you can say to
+a man, Katie," he said in shaking voice.
+
+"A game for cheats," she repeated. "The cheats who cheat with life--and
+then make rules around their cheating and boast about the 'honor' of
+keeping those rules. You'd scorn a man who cheated at cards. Oh you're
+very virtuous--all of you--in your scorn of lesser cheats. What's cards
+compared with the divinest thing in life!"
+
+"I tell you, I played fair," he insisted, his voice still unsteady.
+
+"Why to be sure you did--according to the rules laid down by the cheats!"
+
+Wayne came upon her upstairs a little later, sobbing. And sobbingly she
+told the story--her face buried too much of the time for her to see her
+brother's face, too shaken by her own sobs to mark how strange was his
+breathing. Wayne did not accuse her of not having played a fair game. He
+said almost nothing at all, save at the last, and that under his breath:
+"We'll move heaven and earth to get her back!"
+
+His one reproach was--"Oh Katie--you might have told _me_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+But they did not get her back. July had passed, and August, and most of
+September, and they had not found Ann.
+
+Heaven and earth were not so easily moved.
+
+Katie had tried, and the man who mended the boats had tried, and Wayne,
+but to no avail.
+
+There had come the one letter from her--letter seeking to save "Ann" for
+Katie. It was a key to Ann, but no key to her whereabouts save that it
+was postmarked Chicago.
+
+Those last three months had impressed Katie with the tragic
+indefiniteness of the Chicago postmark.
+
+She had spent the greater part of the summer there, at a quiet little
+hotel on the North Side, where she was nominally one of a party of army
+women. That was the olive branch to her Aunt Elizabeth on the chaperone
+question. For her own part, she had seen too many unchaperoned girls in
+Chicago that summer to care whether she was chaperoned or not.
+
+Her army friends thought Katie interested in some work which she did not
+care to talk about. They thought it interesting, though foolhardy to let
+it bring those lines. Katie was not a beauty, they said among themselves,
+and could not afford lines. Her charm had always been her freshness, her
+buoyancy and her blitheness. Now if she lost that--
+
+Wayne had been there from time to time. It was but a few hours' ride
+from the Arsenal, and his detail to his individual work gave him
+considerable liberty.
+
+He, too, had more "lines" in September than he had had in June. That they
+attributed to his "strenuousness" in his work, and thought it to be
+deplored. After all, the department might throw him down--who knew what
+it might not do?--and then what would have been the use? For a man who
+did not have to live on his pay, Captain Jones was looked upon as
+unnecessarily serious.
+
+But Katie suspected that it was not alone devotion to military science
+had traced those lines. It surprised her a little that they should have
+come, but to Katie herself it was so vital and so tragic a thing that it
+was not difficult to accept the fact of its marking any one who came
+close to it. After that night at the dance there had several times
+stirred a vague uneasiness, calling out the thought that it was a good
+thing Wayne was, as she loosely thought it, immune. But even that
+uneasiness was lost now in sterner things.
+
+She had never gone into her reasons for looking upon her brother as
+"immune." It was an idea fixed in her mind by her association with his
+unhappiness with Clara. Knowing how much he had given, she thought of him
+as having given all. Her sense of the depth of his hurt had unanalyzed
+associations with finality, associations intrenched by Wayne's growing
+"queerness."
+
+It could not be said, however, that that queerness had stood in the way
+of his doing all he could. Some of the best suggestions had come from
+him. And Katie had reasons for suspecting he had done some searching of
+his own which he did not report to her.
+
+She knew that he was worried about her, though he understood too well to
+ask her to give up and turn back to her own life.
+
+Her gratitude to Wayne for that very understanding made her regret the
+more her inability to be frank with him about the man who mended the
+boats. She had had to tell him at first that he was helping, but Wayne
+had seemed to think it so strange, had appeared so little pleased with
+the idea, that she had not seen it as possible to make a clean breast of
+it. She told him that she had talked with him about Ann--that was because
+he had seen her, knew more about it than she did. And that she had talked
+with him again the day Ann left, thinking he might have seen her. That
+Wayne had not liked. "You should have sent for me," he said. "Never take
+outsiders into your confidence in intimate matters like that."
+
+And what she had not found it possible to try to make clear to him was
+that the man who mended the boats seemed to her anything but an outsider.
+
+And if he had not seemed so in those days of early summer, he seemed
+infinitely less so now. She talked with him of things of which she could
+not talk with anyone else. In those talks it was all the rest of the
+people of the world who were the outsiders.
+
+He had been there several times during the summer. Katie knew now that he
+did not mean to spend all his life mending boats. He was writing a play;
+it was things in relation to that brought him to Chicago. Katie wanted to
+know about the play, but when she asked he told her, rather shortly, that
+he did not believe she would like it. He qualified it with saying he did
+not know that anyone would like it.
+
+When he was there he went about with her as she looked for Ann.
+
+Every day she pursued her search, now in this way, now in that. That
+search brought her a vision of the city she would have had in no other
+way. It was that vision, revealed, interpreted, by her anxiety for Ann
+brought the sleepless nights and the ceaseless imagery and imaginings
+which caused her army friends to wish that dear Katie would marry before
+she, as they more feelingly than lucidly put it, lost out that way.
+
+She thought sometimes of Ann's moving picture show, showing her the
+things of which she had dreamed. All this, things seen in her search, had
+become to Katie as a moving picture show. It moved before her awake and
+asleep; "called" to her.
+
+She would stand outside the stores as the girls were coming out at night.
+Stores, factories, all places where girls worked she watched that way. By
+the hundreds, thousands, she saw them filling the city's streets as
+through the long summer one hot day after another drew to a close. Often
+she would crowd into the street cars they were crowding into, rush with
+them for the elevated trains, or follow them across the river and see
+them disappear into boarding-house and rooming-house, those hot, crowded
+places waiting to receive them after the hot, crowded day. Sometimes she
+would go for lunch to the places she saw them going to--always searching,
+and as she searched, wondering, and as she wondered, sorrowing.
+
+She came to know of many things: of "dates"--vulgar enough affairs many
+of them appeared to be. But she no longer dismissed them with that. She
+always wondered now if the sordid-looking adventure might not be at heart
+the divine adventure. Things which she would at one time have called
+"common" and turned from as such she brooded over now as sorry expression
+of a noble thing. And then she would go home to her friends at night and
+sometimes they would seem the moving-picture show--their pleasures and
+standards--the whole of their lives. And she sorrowed that where there
+was setting for loveliness the setting itself should so many times absorb
+it all, and that out on the city's streets that tender fluttering of life
+for life, divine yearning for joy that joy might give again to life,
+should find so many paths to that abyss where joy could be not and where
+the life of life must go. There were days which showed all too brutally
+that many were "called" and few were saved.
+
+Thus had she passed the summer, and thus it happened that she did not
+have in September all the freshness and the gladness that had been her
+charm in May.
+
+Though to the man waiting for her that afternoon she had another and a
+finer charm. Life had taken something from her, but she had wrested
+something from life.
+
+"I could have had a job," she said, and smiled.
+
+But the smile was soon engulfed. "And there was a girl who needed it, she
+told me how she was 'up against it,' and through some caprice she didn't
+get it. Needing it doesn't seem to make a bit of difference. If anything,
+it works the other way."
+
+She had read in the paper that morning that the chorus was to be "tried
+out" for a new musical comedy. Thinking that Ann, too, might have read
+that in the paper, she went.
+
+She had been seeing something of chorus girls as well as shop girls. She
+went to all the musical comedies and sat far front and kept her glasses
+on the chorus. More than once she had stood near stage doors as they
+were coming out. Seeing them so, they were not a group of chorus girls;
+they were a number of individuals, any one of whom might be Ann, more
+than one of whom might be fighting the things Ann had fought, seeking
+the things Ann had sought. It was that about the city that _got_ her. It
+was a city full of individuals, none of whom were to be dismissed as
+just this, or exactly that. She challenged all groupings, those
+groupings which seemed formed by the accidents of life and so often made
+for the tragedy of life.
+
+She was talking to him about chorus girls; announcing her discovery that
+they were just girls in the chorus. "I was once asked to define army
+people," she laughed, "and said that they were people who entered the
+army--either martially or maritally. Now I find that chorus girls are
+girls who enter the chorus. Even their vocabularies can't disguise them,
+and if that can't--what could?
+
+"Though there are different kinds of chorus girls," she reflected. "Some
+wanted to be somewhere else. Some hope to be somewhere else. And some
+swaggeringly make it plain that they wouldn't be anywhere else if they
+could. I'd hate to have to say which kind is the most sad."
+
+"Katie," he said--he never spoke her name save in that timid, lingering
+way--"don't you think you're rather over-emphasizing the sadness?"
+
+Two girls passed them, laughing boisterously. "Perhaps so. I suppose I
+am. And yet nothing seems to me sadder than some of the people who would
+be astonished at suggesting sadness."
+
+That afternoon they were going to the telephone office. Katie had been
+there early in the summer, to the central office and all the exchanges,
+but wanted to go again. And Mann said he would like to go with her and
+see what the thing looked like.
+
+The officials were cordial to them at the telephone office, seeming
+pleased to exhibit and explain. And it seemed that with their rest rooms
+and recreation rooms, their various things to contribute to comfort and
+pleasure, their pride was justified.
+
+But when they were in the immense room where several hundred girls were
+sitting before the boards, rest rooms and recreation rooms did not seem
+to _reach_. They walked behind a long row, their guide proudly calling
+attention to the fact that not one of those girls turned her head to look
+at them. He called it discipline--concentration. Katie, looking at the
+tense faces, was thinking of the price paid for that discipline. Many of
+the girls were very young, some not more than sixteen. They preferred
+taking them young, said the guide; they were easier to break in if they
+had never done anything else.
+
+There was not the shadow of a doubt that they were being "broken in." So
+clearly was that demonstrated that Katie wondered what there would be
+left for them to be broken in to after they had been thoroughly broken in
+to that. Walking slowly behind them, looking at every girl as a possible
+Ann, she wondered what they would have left for a Something Somewhere.
+She remembered the woman who wore the white furs saying it "got on her
+nerves" and wondered what kind of nerves they would be it wouldn't "get
+on." The thing itself seemed a mammoth nervous system, feeding on other
+nervous systems, lesser sacrificed to greater.
+
+Her fancy reached out to all the things that at that instant were going
+through those cords. Plans were being made for dinner, for motoring that
+evening, for many pleasant, restful things. Many little red lights, with
+many possible invitations, were insistently dancing before tired eyes
+just then. They seemed endless--those demands of life--demands of life
+before which other demands of life were slowly going down.
+
+She and Mann were alone for the minute. "And yet," she turned to him,
+after following his glance to a girl's tense, white face, "what can they
+do? The company, I mean. One must be fair. They pay better than most
+things pay, seem more interested in the girls. What more can we ask?"
+
+"Well, what would you think," he suggested, "of 'asking' for a system
+more interested in conserving nervous systems than in producing
+millionaires?
+
+"Why, yes," he added, "in view of the fact that it has to make a few men
+rich, perhaps they are doing all they can. I don't doubt that they think
+they are. But if this were a thing that didn't have to produce
+wealth--then it wouldn't need to endanger health. Don't you think that in
+this nerve-blighting work four or five hours, instead of eight, would be
+a pretty good day's work for girls just out of short clothes?"
+
+"It would seem so," sighed Katie, as she left the room filled with girls
+answering calls--girls looking too worn to respond to any "call" life
+might have for them.
+
+Though when, a little later, they stood in the doorway watching a long
+line of them passing out into the street it was amazing how ready and how
+eager they seemed for what life had to offer them. They all looked tired,
+but many appeared happy--determined that all of life should not be going
+over the wire. It seemed to Katie the most wonderful thing she knew of
+that girls from whom life exacted so much could remain so ready--so
+happily eager--for life.
+
+There was one thing to which she had made up her mind. Amid the
+confusion of her thinking and the sadness of her spirit one thing she saw
+as clear. There was something wrong with an arrangement of life which
+struck that hard at life. The very fact that the capacity for life
+persisted through so much was the more reason for its being a thing to be
+cherished rather than sacrificed.
+
+"Let's walk up this way," she was saying; "walk over the river. The
+bridge is a good place just now."
+
+Katie's face was white and tense as some of the faces they had left
+behind "No," he said impetuously. "Let's not. Let's do something jolly!"
+
+She shook her head "I have a feeling we're going to find her to-night."
+
+Katie was always having that feeling. But as she looked then he had not
+the heart to remind her of the many times it had played her false.
+
+Many girls passed them on the bridge, but not Ann. "I can never make up
+my mind to go," she said. "I always think I ought to wait till the next
+one comes round the corner."
+
+A girl who appeared to be thinking deeply passed them, turning weary eyes
+upon them in languid interest.
+
+"I wonder _what_," Katie exclaimed. "What she's thinking about," she
+explained. "Maybe she's come to the end of her string--and if she has,
+hundreds of thousands of people about her--oh I think it's terrible"--her
+voice broke--"the way people are crowded so close together--and held so
+far apart. Everybody's _alone_. Nobody _knows_."
+
+For a second his hand closed over hers as it rested on the railing of
+the bridge, as if he would bear some of the hurt for her, that hurt she
+was finding in everything.
+
+Despite the extreme simplicity of her dress she looked out of place
+standing on that bridge at that hour; he was thinking that she had not
+lost her distinction with her buoyancy.
+
+Her face was quivering. "Katie," it made him ask, "don't you think you'd
+better--quit?"
+
+She turned wet eyes upon him reproachfully. "From _you_?"
+
+"But is any--individual--worth it?"
+
+"Oh I suppose no 'individual' is worth much to you," she said a
+little bitterly.
+
+There was a touch of irony in the tender smile which was his only
+response.
+
+They stood there in silence watching men and women come and go--solitary
+and in groups--groups tired and groups laughing--groups respectable and
+groups questionable--humanity--worn humanity--as it crossed that bridge.
+
+She recalled that first night she had talked with him--that first time a
+hot day had seemed to her anything more than mere hot day, that night on
+the Mississippi--where distant hills were to be seen. She remembered how
+she had looked around the world that night to see if it needed "saving."
+It seemed a long time ago since she had not been able to see that the
+world needed saving.
+
+That was the night the man who mended the boats told her she had walked
+sunny paths. She looked up at him with a faint smile, smiling at the
+fancy of his being an outsider.
+
+It seemed, on the other hand, that all the hopes and fears in all the
+hearts that were passing them were drawing them together. There had been
+times when she had had a wonderful sense of their silences holding the
+sum of man's experiences.
+
+"You must go home," he was saying decisively.
+
+"Home? Where? To my uncle's? That's where I keep the trunks I'm
+not using."
+
+She laughed and brushed away a tear. "You know in the army we don't
+have homes."
+
+"Well you have temporary homes," he insisted, as each moment she seemed
+to become more worn. "You know what I mean. Go back to your brother's."
+
+"He'll be ordered from there very soon. There'll not be a place there for
+me much longer."
+
+He did not seem to have reckoned with that. His face changed. "Then where
+will you go, Katie?" he asked, very low. "What will you do?"
+
+She shook her head. "I don't know. I don't know where I'll go--and I
+don't know what I'll do."
+
+They stood there in silence, drawn close by thought of separation.
+
+"Shall we walk on?" she said at last. "I've lost the feeling that we're
+going to find Ann to-night."
+
+And so, still silently, they walked on.
+
+But when, after a moment, he looked at her, it was to see that she
+was making heroic effort to control the tears. "Katie!" he murmured,
+"what is it?"
+
+"We're giving up," she said, and could not say more.
+
+"Why no we're not! It's only the method we're giving up. This way of
+doing it. You've tried this long enough."
+
+"But what else is there? Just looking. Just keeping on looking--and
+hoping. Just the chance. What other method is there?"
+
+"We'll find some other," he insisted, not willing, when she looked like
+that, to speak his fears. "There'll be some other way. But you can't keep
+on this way--dear."
+
+There was another silence--a different one: silence which opened to
+receive them at the throb in his voice as he spoke that last word.
+
+He had to go back that night. "Well?" he asked gently, as they neared
+her hotel.
+
+"I'll be down in a couple of days," replied Katie, not steadily.
+
+"And you'll be there a little while, won't you," he asked wistfully,
+"before you go--you don't know where?"
+
+"Yes," she said, turning her eyes upon him for just an instant, "a little
+while--before I go--I don't know where."
+
+But though she was going--she didn't know where--though she was giving
+up--seemed conquered--through all the uncertainty and the sadness there
+surged a strange new joy in their hearts as, very slowly, they walked
+that final block.
+
+At the door, after a moment's full silence, she held out her hand. "And
+you'll be down there--mending boats?"
+
+He nodded, his eyes going where words had not ventured.
+
+"And you'll--come and see me?" she asked shyly. "You don't mean, do
+you,"--looking away, as if with scarcely the courage to say it--"that I'm
+to 'stop'--everything?"
+
+"No, Katie," he said, and his voice was shaking, "I think you must know I
+do not mean you are to--stop everything."
+
+As they lingered for a final moment, they were alone--far out in the
+sweet wild new places of the spirit; and all that man had ever yearned
+for, all joy that had been given and all joy denied seemed as a rich
+sea--fathomless sea--swelling just beneath that sweet wild new thing that
+had fluttered to consciousness in their hearts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+The new life in her heart gave her new courage that night to look out at
+life. She faced what before that she had evaded consciously facing.
+
+Perhaps they would not find Ann at all. Perhaps Ann had given up--as they
+were giving up. Perhaps Ann was not there to be found.
+
+It was her fight against that fear had kept her so much in the crowds.
+Ann was there. She had only to find her. Leaving the crowds seemed to be
+admitting that Ann was not in them; for if she really felt she was in
+them, surely she would not consent to leaving them.
+
+That idea of Ann's not being there was as a shadow which had from time to
+time crept beside her. In the crowds she lost it. There were so many in
+the crowds. Ann, too, was in the crowds. She had only to stay in them and
+she must find her.
+
+Now she was leaving them; and it was he who understood the crowds was
+telling her to leave them. Did _he_ think she was not there? Why had she
+not had the courage to press it? There was so much they should have been
+talking of in those last blocks--and they had talked of nothing.
+
+But the new warmth flooded Katie's heart at thought of having talked of
+nothing. What was there to talk about so important as talking of
+nothing? In a new way it drew her back to the crowds; the crowds that
+talked so loudly of many unlovely things in order to still in their
+hearts that call for the loveliness of talking of nothing.
+
+It gave her new understanding of Ann. Ann was one who must rest in the
+wonder of talking of nothing. It was for that she had gone down. The
+world had destroyed her for the very thing for which life loved
+her--Katie joining with the world.
+
+She would not have done that to-night. To-night, in the face of all the
+world, she must have joined with life.
+
+She wondered if all along it was not the thing for which she had most
+loved Ann. This shy new thing in her own heart seemed revealing Ann. It
+was kin to her, and to Katie's feeling for her.
+
+Many times she had wondered why she cared so terribly, would ask herself,
+as she could hear her friends asking if they knew: "But does it matter so
+much as all this?"
+
+She had never been able to make clear to herself why it mattered so
+much--mattered more than anything else mattered. None of the reasons
+presenting themselves on the surface were commensurate to the depth of
+the feeling. To-night she wondered if deep below all else might not lie
+that thing of Ann's representing life, her failure with Ann meaning
+infidelity to life.
+
+It turned her to Ann's letter;--she had not had the courage to read it
+for a number of days.
+
+"Katie," Ann had written, "I'm writing to try and show you that you were
+not all wrong. That there was something there. And I'm not doing it for
+myself, Katie. I'm doing it for you.
+
+"If I can just forget I'm writing about myself, feel instead that I'm
+writing about somebody you've cared for, believed in, somebody who has
+disappointed and hurt you, trying to show you--for _your_ sake--if I
+don't mind being either egotistical or terrible for the sake of
+showing you--
+
+"It's not _me_ that matters, Katie--it's what you thought of me. That's
+why I'm writing.
+
+"I never could talk to you right. For a long time I couldn't talk at all,
+and then that night I talked most of the night I didn't tell the real
+things, after all. And at the last I told you something I knew would hurt
+you without telling you the things that might keep it from hurting,
+without saving for you the things you had thought you saw. I don't know
+why I did that--desperate, I suppose, because it was all spoiled, frantic
+because I was helpless to keep it from being spoiled. And then I said
+things to _you_--that must show--And yet, Katie, as long as I'm trying to
+be honest I've got to say again, though all differently, that I was
+surprised--shocked, I suppose, at something in the way you looked. It's
+just a part of your world that I don't understand. It's as I told
+you--we've lived in different worlds. Things--some things--that seem all
+right in yours--well, it's just surprising that you should think them all
+right. In your world the way you do things seems to matter so much more
+than what you do.
+
+"I've gone, Katie, and as far as I'm concerned it's what has to be. You
+see you couldn't fit me in. The only thing I can do for you now is
+to--stay gone. You'll feel badly--oh, I know that--but in the end it
+won't be as bad as trying to fit me in, trying to keep it up. And I can't
+have you doing things for me in another way--as you'd want
+to--because--it's hard to explain just what I mean, but after I've been
+Ann I couldn't be just somebody you were helping. It meant too much to me
+to be Ann to become just a girl you're good to.
+
+"What I'd rather do--want this letter to do--is keep for you that idea of
+Ann--memory of her.
+
+"So that's why I want to tell you about some things that really were Ann.
+I haven't any more right to you, but I want you to know you have some
+right to her.
+
+"I told you that I was standing on the corner, and that he asked me to
+get in the automobile, and that I did, and that that--began it. It was
+true. It was one way to put it. I'll try and put it another way.
+
+"It isn't even fair to him, putting it that way. You know, of course,
+that he's not in the habit of asking girls on corners to go with him. I
+think--there at the first--he was sorry for me. I think it was what you
+would call an impulse and that being sorry for me had more to do with it
+than anything else.
+
+"And I know I wasn't fair to myself when I put it that way; and you
+weren't fair to me when you called it common and low. That's what I want
+to try and show you--that it wasn't that.
+
+"It was in the warm weather. It had been a hot, hard day. Oh they were
+all hot, hard days. I didn't feel well. I made mistakes. I was scolded
+for it. I quarreled with one of the girls about washing my hands! She
+said she was there before I was and that I took the bowl. We said hateful
+things to each other, grew furious about it. We were both so tired--the
+day had been so hot--
+
+"Out on the street I was so ashamed. It seemed _that_ was what life
+had come to.
+
+"That afternoon I got something that was going over the wire. You get so
+tired you don't care what's going over the wire--you aren't alive enough
+to care--but I just happened to be let in to this--a man's voice talking
+to the girl he loved. I don't remember what he was saying, but his voice
+told that there were such things in the world--and girls they were for.
+One glimpse of a beautiful country--to one in a desert. I don't know,
+perhaps that's why I talked that way to the other poor girl who was
+tired--perhaps that's why I went in the automobile.
+
+"I had to ride a long way on the street car to get where I boarded. I had
+to stand up--packed in among a lot of people who were hot and tired
+too--the smell so awful--everything so _ugly_.
+
+"I had to transfer. That's where I was when I first saw him--standing on
+the corner waiting for the other car.
+
+"Something was the matter--it was a long time coming. I was so
+tired, Katie, as I stood there waiting. Tired of having it all going
+over the wire.
+
+"He was doing something to his automobile. I didn't pay any attention at
+first--then I realized he was just fooling with the automobile--and was
+looking at me.
+
+"And then he took my breath away by stepping up to me and raising his
+hat. I had never had a man raise his hat to me in that way--
+
+"And then he said--and his voice was low--and like the voices in your
+world are--I hadn't heard them before, except on the wire--'I beg
+pardon--I trust I'm not offensive. But you seem so tired. You're waiting
+for a car? It doesn't appear to be coming. Why not ride with me instead?
+I'll take you where you want to go. Though I wish'--it was like the voice
+on the wire--and for _me_--'that you'd let me take you for a ride.'
+
+"Katie, _you_ called him charming. You told about the women in your world
+being in love with him. If he's charming to them--to you--what do you
+suppose he seemed to me as he stood there smiling at me--looking so sorry
+for me--?
+
+"He went on talking. He drew a beautiful picture of what we would do. We
+would ride up along the lake. There would be a breeze from the lake, he
+said. And way up there he knew a place where we could sit out of doors
+under trees and eat our dinner and listen to beautiful music. Didn't I
+think that might be nice?
+
+"Didn't I think it might be--_nice?_ Oh Katie--you'd have to know what
+that day had been--what so many days--all days--had been.
+
+"I looked down the street. The car was coming at last--packed--men
+hanging on outside--everybody looking so hot--so dreadful. 'Oh you
+mustn't get in that car,' he said.
+
+"Beautiful things were beckoning to me--things I was to be taken to in an
+automobile--I had never been in an automobile. It seemed I was being
+rescued, carried away to a land of beautiful things, far away from
+crowded street cars, from the heat and the work that make you do things
+you hate yourself for doing.
+
+"_Was_ it so common, Katie? So low? What I felt wasn't--what I dreamed as
+we went along that beautiful drive beside the lake.
+
+"For I dreamed that the city of dreadful things was being left behind.
+The fairy prince had come for me. He was taking me to the things of
+dreams, things which lately had seemed to slip out beyond even dreams.
+
+"It was just as he had said--A little table under a tree--a breeze from
+the lake--music--the lovely things to eat and the beautiful happy people.
+Of course I wasn't dressed as much as they were, so we sat at a little
+table half hidden in one corner--Oh I thought it was so wonderful!
+
+"And he saw I thought it wonderful and that interested him, pleased him.
+Maybe it was new to him. I think he likes things that are new to him.
+Anyhow, he was very gentle and lovely to me that night. He told me I was
+beautiful--that nothing in the world had ever been so beautiful as my
+eyes. You know how he would say it, the different ways he would have of
+saying it beautifully. And I want to say again--if it seems beautiful to
+you--Why, Katie, I had never had anything.
+
+"Going home he kissed me--
+
+"When I went home that night the world was all different. The world was
+too wonderful for even thoughts. Too beautiful to believe it could be
+the world.
+
+"I was in the arms of the wonderful new beauty of the world. Something in
+my heart which had been crouching down afraid and cold and sad grew warm
+and live and glad. Life grew so lovely; and as the days went on I think I
+grew lovely too. He said so; said love was making me radiant--that I was
+wonderful--that I was a child of love.
+
+"Those days when I was in the dream, folded in the dream, days before any
+of it fell away, they were golden days, singing days--days there are no
+words for.
+
+"We saw each other often. He said business kept him away from Chicago
+much of the time. I didn't know he was in the army; I suppose now he
+belonged in some place near there. And I think you told me he was not
+married. He said he was--but was going to be divorced some day. But I
+didn't seem to care--didn't think much about it. Nothing really mattered
+except the love.
+
+"Then there came a time when I knew I was trying to keep a door
+shut--keep the happiness in and the thoughts out. It wasn't that I came
+to think it was wrong. But the awful fear that wanted to get into my
+heart was that it was _not_ beautiful.
+
+"And it wasn't beautiful because to him it wasn't beautiful. It was
+only--what shall I say--would there be such a thing as usurping beauty?
+That was the thought--the fear--I tried and tried to push away. I see I
+can't tell it; no matter how much we may want to tell everything--no
+matter how willing we are--there are things can't be told, so I'll just
+have to say that things happened that forced the door open, and I had to
+know that what to me was--oh what shall I say, Katie?--was like the
+prayer at the heart of a dream--didn't, to him, have anything to do with
+dreams, or prayers, or beautiful, far-away things that speak to you from
+the stars.
+
+"And having nothing to do with them, he seemed to be pushing them away,
+crowding them out, hurting them.
+
+"I haven't told it at all. I can't. But, Katie, you're in the army, you
+must admire courage and I want you to take my word for it when I tell you
+I did what it took courage to do. I think you'd let me live on in your
+heart as Ann if you knew what I gave up--and just for something all dim
+and distant I had no assurance I'd ever come near to. For oh, Katie--when
+you love love--need it--it's not so easy to let go what's the closest
+you've come to it. Not so easy to turn from the most beautiful thing
+you've known--just because something _very far away_ whispers to you that
+you're hurting beauty.
+
+"I didn't go back. One night my Something Somewhere called me away--and
+I left the only real thing I had--and I didn't go back. I don't
+know--maybe I'm overestimating myself--perhaps I'm just measuring it by
+the suffering--but it seems to me, Katie, that you needn't despise
+yourself when loneliness can't take you back to the substitutes offered
+for your Something Somewhere. Something in you had been brave; something
+in you has been faithful--and what you've actually _done_ doesn't matter
+much in comparison with that.
+
+"I've been writing most of the day. It's evening now, and I'm tired. I
+was going to tell more. Tell you of things that happened afterward--tell
+you why you found me where you did find me. But now I don't believe I
+want to tell those things. They're too awful. They'd hurt you--haunt you.
+And that's not what I want to do. What I want is to make you understand,
+and if the part I've told hasn't done that--
+
+"'I think it was to save Ann you were going to give up Verna,' you said.
+Oh Katie--how did you know? How _do_ you know?
+
+"And then you called to me. You weren't sick at all--were you, Katie? Oh
+I soon guessed that it was the wonderful goodness of your heart--not the
+disease of it--caused that 'attack.'
+
+"Then those beautiful days began. I wanted to talk about what those days
+meant--what you meant--what our play--our dream meant. Things I thought
+that I never said--how proud I was you should want to make up those
+stories about me--how I wanted to _be_ the things you said I was--and oh,
+Katie dear, the trouble you got me into by loving to tell those
+stories--telling one to one man and another to another! I'd never known
+any one full of _play_ like you--yet play that is so much more than just
+play. Sometimes a picture of Centralia would come to me when I'd hear you
+telling about my having lived in Florence. Sometimes when I was listening
+to stories of things you and I had done in Italy I'd see that old place
+where I used to put suspenders in boxes--! Katie, how strange it all was.
+How did it happen that things you made up were things I had dreamed about
+without really knowing what I was dreaming? How wonderful you were,
+Katie--how good--to put me in the things of my dreams rather than the
+things of my life. The world doesn't do that for us.
+
+"It seems a ridiculous thing to be mentioning, when I owe you so many
+things too wonderful to mention--but you know I do owe you some money. I
+took what was in my purse. I hope I can pay it back. I'm so tired just
+now it doesn't seem to me I ever can--but if I don't, don't associate it
+with my not paying back the missionary money!
+
+"Katie, do you know how I'd like to pay you back? I'd like to give you
+the most beautiful things I've ever dreamed. And I hope that some of
+them, at least, are waiting somewhere--and not very far off--for you. How
+I used to love to hear you laugh--watch you play your tricks on
+people--so funny and so dear--
+
+"Now that's over. Katie, I don't believe it's all my fault, and I know
+it's not yours. It's our two worlds. You see you _couldn't_ fit me in.
+
+"I used to be afraid it must end like that. Yet most of the time I felt
+so secure--that was the wonder of you--that you could make me so
+beautifully secure. And your brother, Katie, have you told him? I don't
+care if you do, only if you tell him anything, won't you try and make him
+understand everything? I couldn't bear it to think he might think me--oh
+those things I don't believe you really think me.
+
+"If you don't see me any more, you won't think those things. It's easier
+to understand when things are all over. It's easier to forgive people who
+are not around. After what's happened I couldn't be Ann if I were with
+you. That's spoiled. But if _I_ go--I think maybe Ann can stay. For both
+our sakes, that's what I want.
+
+"'Twas a lovely dream, Katie. The house by the river--the big trees--the
+big flag that waved over us--the pretty dresses--the lovely way of
+living--the dogs--the men who were always so nice to us--Last night I
+dreamed you and Worth and I were going to a wedding. That is, it started
+out to be a wedding--then it seemed it was a funeral. But you were
+saying such funny things about the funeral, Katie. Then I woke up--"
+
+The letter broke off there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+The next morning Katie did something which it had been in her mind to do
+for some time. She went to Centralia.
+
+It was not that she expected Centralia to furnish any information about
+Ann. It was hard to say just why she was so certain Ann had not gone back
+to Centralia. The conviction had something to do with her belief in Ann.
+
+Centralia, however, might be an avenue to something. Furthermore, she
+wanted to see Centralia. That was part of her passion for seeing the
+thing as a whole, realizing it. And she had a suspicion that if anything
+remained to forgive Ann it would be forgiven after seeing Centralia.
+
+And back of all that lurked the longing to tell Ann's father what she
+thought of him.
+
+Katie was in a strange mood that day. She had read Ann's letter many
+times, but had never finished it with that poignantly personal heartache
+of the night before. It was as if she were not worthy that new thing
+which kept warm in her own heart. For she had been hostile to the very
+thing from which the warmth in her own heart drew. The sadness deepened
+in the thought that the great hosts of the world's people sheltered joy
+in their own hearts and hardened those very hearts against all to whom
+love came less fortunately than it had come to them. How could there be
+'hope for the world, no matter what it might do about its material
+affairs, while heart closed against heart like that, while men and women
+drew their own portions of joy and shut themselves in with them, refusing
+to see that they were one with all who drew, or would draw. It seemed the
+most cruel, the most wrong thing of all the world that men--and above
+all, women--should turn their most unloving face upon the face of love.
+
+Of which things she thought again as she passed various Centralias
+and wondered if there were Anns longing for love in all those
+unlovely places.
+
+She came at last, after crossing a long stretch of nothingness, to the
+town where Ann had lived, town from which she had gone forth to hear
+grand opera and find the loveliness of life. But as she stepped from the
+train and approached a group of men lounging at the station it came to
+her that "Ann's father," particularly as Ann had not been Ann in
+Centralia, was a somewhat indefinite person to be inquiring for.
+
+After a moment's consideration she approached the man who looked newest
+to his profession and asked how many churches there were in Centralia.
+Thereupon one man beat open retreat and all viewed her with suspicion.
+But the man of her choice was a brave man and ventured to guess that
+there were four.
+
+One of his comrades held that there were five. A discussion ensued
+closing with the consensus of opinion in favor of the greater number.
+
+Then Katie explained her predicament; she wanted to find a man who was a
+minister in Centralia and she didn't know his name. Reassured, they
+gathered round interestedly. Was he young or old? Katie cautiously placed
+him in the forties or fifties. Then they guessed and reckoned that it
+couldn't be either the Reverend Lewis or that new fellow at the Baptist.
+Was he--would she say he was one to be kind of easy on a fellow, or did
+she think he took his religion pretty hard?
+
+Katie was forced to admit that she feared he took it hard. With that they
+were agreed to a man that it must be the Reverend Saunders.
+
+She was thereupon directed to the residence of the Reverend Saunders.
+Right down there was a restaurant with a sign in the window "Don't Pass
+By." But she was to pass by. Then there was the church said "Welcome."
+No, that was not the Reverend Saunders' church. It was the church where
+she turned to the right. She could turn to the left, but, on the whole,
+it would be better to turn to the right--It would all have been quite
+simple had it not been for the fullness of the directions.
+
+She took it that the fullness of their directions was in proportion to
+the emptiness of their lives.
+
+As she walked slowly along she appreciated what Ann had said of the
+town's being walled in by nothingness--the people walled in by
+nothingness. Her two blocks on "Main Street" showed her Centralia as a
+place of petty righteousness and petty vice. There was nothing so large
+and flexible as the real joys of either righteousness or unrighteousness.
+
+Nor was Centralia picturesquely desolate. It had not that quality of
+hopelessness which lures to melancholy. New houses were going up. The
+last straw was that Centralia was "growing."
+
+And it was on those streets that a lonely little girl with deep brown
+eyes and soft brown hair had dreamed of a Something Somewhere.
+
+As she turned in at the residence of the Reverend Saunders Katie was
+newly certain that Ann had not come back to Centralia. It seemed the one
+disappointment in Ann she was not prepared to bear would be to find that
+she had returned to the home of her youth.
+
+Katie had been shown into the parlor. She was sitting in a rocking chair
+which "squeaked"--her smartly shod foot resting on a pale blue rose--the
+pale blue rose being in the carpet. The carpet also squeaked--or the
+papers underneath it did. On the table beside her was a large and ornate
+Bible, an equally splendid album, and something called "Stepping
+Heavenward."
+
+Oh no--Ann had not come back. She knew that before she asked.
+
+Ann's father was a tall, thin man with small gray eyes. "Thin lips that
+shut together tight"--she recalled that. And the kind of beard that is
+unalterably associated with self-righteousness.
+
+It was clear he did not know what to make of Katie. She was wearing a
+linen suit which had vague suggestions of the world, the flesh, and the
+devil. She had selected it that morning with considerable care. Likewise
+the shoes! And the angle of the quill in Katie's hat stirred in him the
+same suspicion and aggression which his beard stirred in her.
+
+Thus viewing each other across seas of prejudice, separated, as it
+were, by all the experiences of the human race, they began to speak of
+Ann and of life.
+
+"I am a friend of your daughter's," was Katie's opening.
+
+It startled him, stirring something on the borderland of the human. Then
+he surveyed Katie anew and shut his lips together more tightly. It was
+evidently just what he had expected his daughter to come to.
+
+"And I came," said Katie, "to ask if you had any idea where she was."
+
+That reached even farther into the border-country. He sat forward--his
+lips relaxed. "Don't _you_ know?"
+
+"No--I don't know. She was living with me, and she went away."
+
+That recalled his own injury. He sat back and folded his arms. "She was
+living with _me_--and she went away. No, I know nothing of her
+whereabouts. My daughter saw fit to leave her father's house--under
+circumstances that bowed his head in shame. She has not seen fit to
+return, or to give information of her whereabouts. I have tried to serve
+my God all my days," said the Reverend Saunders; "I do not know why this
+should have been visited upon me. But His ways are inscrutable. His
+purpose is not revealed."
+
+"No," said Katie crisply, "I should say not."
+
+He expressed his condemnation of the relation of manner to subject by a
+compression of both eyes and lips. That, Katie supposed, was the way he
+had looked when he told Ann her dog had been sent away.
+
+"Did you ever wonder," she asked, with real curiosity, "how in the world
+you happened to have such a daughter?"
+
+"I have many times taken it up in prayer," was his response.
+
+Katie sat there viewing him and looking above his head at the motto "God
+Is Love." She wondered if Ann had had to work it.
+
+It was the suggestion in the motto led her to ask: "Tell me, have you
+really no idea, have you never had so much as a suspicion of why Ann
+went away?"
+
+"Who?" he asked sharply.
+
+"Your daughter. Her friends call her Ann."
+
+"Her name," said he uncompromisingly, "is Maria."
+
+Katie smiled slightly. Maria, as he uttered it, squeaked distressingly.
+
+"Be that as it may. But have you really no notion of why she went away?"
+
+She was looking at him keenly. After a moment his eyes fell, or
+rather, lifted under the look. "She had a good home--a God-fearing
+home," he said.
+
+But Katie did not let go her look. He had to come back to it, and he
+shifted. Did he have it in him remotely, unavowedly, to suspect?
+
+It would seem so, for he continued his argument, as if meeting
+something. He repeated that she had a good home. He enumerated her
+blessings.
+
+But when he paused it was to find Katie looking at him in just the
+same way. It forced him to an unwilling, uneasy: "What more could a
+girl want?"
+
+"What she wanted," said Katie passionately, "was life."
+
+The word spoken as Katie spoke it had suggestion of unholy things. "But
+God is life," he said.
+
+Suddenly Katie's eyes blazed. "God! Well it's my opinion that you know
+just as little about _Him_ as you do about 'life.'"
+
+It was doubtless the most dumbfounded moment of the Reverend Saunders'
+life. His jaw dropped. But only to come together the tighter. "Young
+woman," said he, "I am a servant of God. I have served Him all my days."
+
+"Heaven pity Him!" said Katie, and rocked and her chair squeaked
+savagely.
+
+He rose. "I cannot permit such language to be used in my house."
+
+Katie gave no heed. "I'll tell you why your daughter left. She left
+because you _starved_ her.
+
+"Above your head is a motto. The motto says, 'God Is Love.' I could
+almost fancy somebody hung that in this house as a _joke_!
+
+"You see you don't know anything about love. That's why you don't know
+anything about God--or life--or Ann.
+
+"In this universe of mysterious things," Katie went on, "it so
+happened--as you have remarked, God's ways are indeed inscrutable--that
+unto you was born a child ordained for love."
+
+She paused, held herself by the mystery of that.
+
+And as she contemplated the mystery of it her wrath against him fell
+strangely away. Telling him what she thought of him suddenly ceased to be
+the satisfying thing she had anticipated. It was all too mysterious.
+
+It grew so large and so strange that it did not seem a matter the
+Reverend Saunders had much to do with it. Telling him what she
+thought of him was not the thing interesting her then. What
+interested her was wondering why he was as he was. How it had all
+happened. What it all meant.
+
+Her wondering almost drew her to him; certainly it gave her a new
+approach. "Oh isn't it a pity!" was what Katie said next. And there was
+pain and feeling and almost sympathy in her voice as she repeated, "Isn't
+it a pity!"
+
+He, too, spoke differently--more humanly. "Isn't--what a pity?"
+
+"That we bungle it so! That we don't seem to know anything about
+each other.
+
+"Why I suppose you _didn't_ know--you simply didn't have it _in_ you to
+know--that the way she needed to serve God was by laughing and dancing!"
+
+He was both outraged and drawn. He neither rebuked nor agreed. He waited.
+
+"You see it was this way. You were one thing; she was another thing. And
+neither of you had any way of getting at the thing that the other was. So
+you just grew more intolerant in the things _you_ were, and that, I
+suppose, is the way hearts are broken and lives are spoiled."
+
+Her eyes had filled. It had drawn her back to her mood of the morning.
+"Doesn't it seem to you," she asked gently of the Reverend Saunders,
+"that it's just an awful pity?"
+
+The Reverend Saunders did not reply. But he was not looking at Katie's
+quill or Katie's shoes. He was looking at Katie's wet eyes.
+
+And Katie, as they sat there for a moment in silence, was not seeing him
+alone as the Reverend Saunders. She was seeing him as product of
+something which had begun way back across the centuries, seeing far back
+of the Reverend Saunders that spirit of intolerance which had shaped
+him--wrung him dry--spirit which in the very beginning had lost the
+meaning of those words which hung above the Reverend Saunders' head.
+
+It seemed a childish thing to be blaming the Reverend Saunders for the
+things the centuries had made him.
+
+Indeed, she no longer felt like "blaming" any one. Sorrow which comes
+through seeing leaves small room for blame.
+
+Katie did not know as much about the history of mankind as she now wished
+she did--as she meant to know!--but there did open to her a glimpse of
+the havoc wrought by the forerunners of the Reverend Saunders--of all the
+children of love blighted in the name of a God of love.
+
+She had risen. And as she looked at him again she was sorry for him.
+Sterility of the heart seemed a thing for pity rather than scorn. "I'm
+sorry for you," she spoke it. "Oh I'm sorry for us all! We all bungle it!
+We're all in the grip of dead things, aren't we? Do you suppose it will
+ever be any different?"
+
+And still he looked, not at the quill or the shoes, but the eyes, eyes
+which seemed sorrowing with all the love sorrows of the centuries. "Young
+woman," he said uncertainly, "you puzzle me."
+
+"I puzzle myself," said Katie, and wiped her eyes and laughed a little,
+thinking of the scornful exit she had meant to make after telling him
+what she thought of him.
+
+She retraced her steps and waited for two hours at the station,
+reconstructing for herself Ann's girlhood in Centralia and thinking
+larger thoughts of the things which spoiled girlhoods, the pity of it
+all. And it seemed that even self-righteousness was not wholly to blame.
+Katie felt a little lonely in losing her scorn of "goodness." She had so
+enjoyed hating the godly. If even they were to be gently grouped with the
+wicked as more to be pitied than hated, then whom would one hate?
+
+Did knowing--seeing--spoil hating? And was all hating to go when
+all men saw?
+
+At the last minute she had a fight with herself to keep from going back
+and refunding the missionary money! The missionary money worried Katie.
+She wanted it paid back. But she saw that it was not her paying it back
+would satisfy her. She even felt that she had no right to pay it back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+She returned to Chicago to find that her uncle was in town. He had left a
+message asking her to join him for dinner over at his hotel.
+
+It was pleasant to be dining with her uncle that night. The best
+possible antidote she could think of for Ann's father was her dear uncle
+the Bishop.
+
+As she watched him ordering their excellent dinner she wondered what he
+would think of Ann's father. She could hear him calling Centralia a
+God-forsaken spot and Ann's father a benighted fossil. Doubtless he would
+speak of the Reverend Saunders as a type fast becoming obsolete. "And the
+quicker the better," she could hear him add.
+
+But she fancied that the Reverend Saunderses of the world had yet a long
+course to run in the Centralias of the world. She feared that many Anns
+had yet to go down before them.
+
+At any rate, her uncle was not that. To-night Katie loved him anew for
+his delightful worldliness.
+
+Though he was not in his best form that night. He was on his way out to
+Colorado for the marriage of his son. "There was no doing anything about
+it," he said with a sigh. "My office has made me enough the diplomat,
+Katherine, to know when to quit trying. So I'm going out there--fearful
+trip--why it's miles from Denver--to do all I can to respectablize the
+affair. It seemed to me a trifle inconsiderate--in view of the effort
+I'm making--that they could not have waited until next month; there are
+things calling me to Denver then. Now what shall I do there all that
+time?--though I may run on to California. But it seems my daughter-in-law
+would have her honeymoon in the mountains while the aspens are just a
+certain yellow she's fond of. So of course"--with his little shrug Katie
+loved--"what's my having a month on my hands?"
+
+"Well, uncle, dear uncle," she laughed, "hast forgotten the days when
+nothing mattered so much as having the leaves the right shade of yellow?"
+
+"I have not--and trust I never will," he replied, with a touch of
+asperity; "but I feel that Fred has shown very little consideration for
+his parents."
+
+"But why, uncle? I'm strong for her! She sounds to me like just what our
+family needs."
+
+He gave her a glance over his glasses--that delighted Katie, too; she had
+long ago learned that when her uncle felt occasion demand he look like a
+bishop he lowered his chin and looked over his glasses.
+
+"Well our family may need something; it's the first intimation I've had,
+Katherine, that it's in distress--but I don't see that a young woman who
+votes is the crying need of the family."
+
+"She's in great luck," returned Katie, "to live in a State where she
+can vote."
+
+He held up his hands. "_Katie? You_?"
+
+"Oh I haven't prowled around this town all summer, uncle, without seeing
+things that women ought to be voting about."
+
+He stared at her. "Well, Katie, you--you don't mean to take it up, do
+you?"
+
+He looked so unhappy that she laughed. "Oh I don't know, uncle, what I
+mean to 'take up,' but I herewith serve notice that I'm going to take
+something up--something besides bridge and army gossip."
+
+She looked at him reflectively. "Uncle, does it ever come home to you
+that life's a pretty serious business?"
+
+"Well I hadn't wanted it to come home to me tonight," he sighed
+plaintively. "I'm really most upset about this unfortunate affair. I had
+thought that you, Katie, would be pleasant."
+
+"Forgive me," she laughed. "I can see how it must disturb you, uncle, to
+hear me express a serious thought."
+
+He laughed at her delightedly. He loved Katie. "You've got the fidgets,
+Katie. Just the fidgets. That's what's the matter with the whole lot of
+you youngsters. It's becoming an epidemic--a sort of spiritual measles.
+Though I must say, I hadn't expected you to catch it. And just a word of
+warning, Katie. You've always been so unique as a trifler that one rather
+hates to see you swallowed up in the troop of serious-minded young women.
+I was talking to Darrett the other day--charming fellow, Darrett--and he
+held that your charm was in your brilliant smile. I told him I hadn't
+thought so much about the brilliant smile, but that I knew a good deal
+about a certain impish grin. Katie, you have a very disreputable grin.
+You have a way of directing it at me across ponderous drawing-rooms that
+I wish you'd stop. It gives me a sort of--'Oh I am on to you, uncle old
+boy' feeling that is most--"
+
+"Disconcerting?"
+
+"Unreverential."
+
+He looked at her, humorously and yet meditatively--fondly. "Katie, why
+do you think it's so funny? Why does it make you want to grin?"
+
+"You know. Else you wouldn't read the grin."
+
+"But I don't know. Nobody else grins at me."
+
+"Oh don't you think we're a good deal of a joke, uncle?"
+
+"Joke? Who?--Why?"
+
+"Us. The solemnity with which we take ourselves and the way the world
+lets us do it."
+
+He laughed. Then, as one coming back to his lines: "You have no
+reverence."
+
+"No, neither have you. That's why we get on."
+
+He made an unsuccessful attempt at frowning upon her and surveyed her a
+little more seriously. "Katie, do you know that the things you say
+sometimes puzzle me. They're queer. They burrow. They're so insultingly
+knowing, down at the root of their unknowingness. I'll think--'She didn't
+know how "pat" that was'--and then as I consider it I'll think--'Yes,
+she did, only she didn't know that she knew.' I remember telling your
+mother once when you were a little girl that if you were going to sit
+through service with your head cocked in that knowing fashion I wished
+she'd leave you at home."
+
+Katie laughed and cocked her head at him again, just to show she had not
+forgotten. Then she fell serious.
+
+"Uncle, for a long time I only smiled. I seemed to know enough to do
+that. Do you think you could bear it with Christian fortitude if I
+were to tell you I'm beginning now to try and figure out what I was
+smiling at?"
+
+He shook his head. "'Twould spoil it."
+
+He looked at his niece and smiled as he asked: "Katie dear, are you
+becoming world weary?" Katie, very smart that night in white gown and
+black hat, appealed to him as distinctly humorous in the role of world
+weariness.
+
+"No," returned Katie, "not world weary; just weary of not knowing
+the world."
+
+Afterward in his room they chatted cheerfully of many things: family
+affairs, army and church affairs. Katie strove to keep to them as merely
+personal matters.
+
+But there were no merely personal matters any more. All the little things
+were paths to the big things. There was no way of keeping herself
+detached. Even the seemingly isolated topic of the recent illness of the
+Bishop's wife led full upon the picture of other people she had been
+seeing that summer who looked ill.
+
+Her uncle was telling of a case he had recently disposed of, a rector of
+his diocese who was guilty of an atheistic book. He spoke feelingly of
+what he called the shallowness of rationalism, of the dangers of the age,
+beautifully of that splendid past which the church must conserve. He told
+of some lectures he himself was to deliver on the fallacies of socialism.
+"It's honeycombing our churches, Katherine--yes, and even the army.
+Darrett tells me they've found it's spreading among the men. Nice state
+of affairs were we to have any sort of industrial war!"
+
+It was hard for Katie to keep silence, but she felt so sadly the lack of
+assurance arising from lack of knowledge. Well, give her a little time,
+she would fix that!
+
+She contented herself with asking if he anticipated an industrial war.
+
+The Bishop made a large gesture and said he hoped not, but he felt it a
+time for the church to throw all her forces to safeguarding the great
+heritage of the country's institutions. He especially deplored that the
+church itself did not see it more clearly, more unitedly. He mentioned
+fellow bishops who seemed to be actually encouraging inroads upon
+tradition. Where did they expect it to lead?--he demanded.
+
+"Perhaps," meekly suggested Katie, "they expect it to lead to growth."
+
+"Growth!" snorted the Bishop. "Destruction!"
+
+They passed to the sunnier subject of raising money. As regards the
+budget, Bishop Wayneworth was the church's most valued servant. His
+manner of good-humored tolerance gave Mammon a soothing sense of being
+understood, moving the much maligned god to reach for its check book,
+just to bear the friendly bishop out in his lenient interpretation of a
+certain text about service rendered in two directions.
+
+He was telling of a fund he expected to raise at a given time. If he did,
+a certain capitalist would duplicate it. The Bishop became jubilant at
+the prospect.
+
+And as they talked, there passed before Katie, as in review, the things
+she had seen that summer--passed before her the worn faces of those
+girls who night after night during the hot summer had come from the
+stores and factories where the men of whom her uncle was so jubilantly
+speaking made the money which they were able to subscribe to the church.
+She thought of her uncle's church; she could not recall having seen many
+such faces in the pews of that church. She thought of Ann--wondered where
+Ann might be that night while she and her uncle chatted so cheerfully in
+his pleasant room at his luxurious hotel. She tried to think of anything
+for which her uncle stood which would give her confidence in saying to
+herself, "Ann will be saved." The large sum of money over which he was
+gloating was to be used for a new cathedral. She wondered if the Anns of
+her uncle's city would find the world a safer or a sweeter place after
+that cathedral had been erected. She thought of Ann's world of the opera
+and world of work. Was it true--as the man who mended the boats would
+hold--that the one made the other possible--only to be excluded from it?
+And all the while there swept before her faces--faces seen in the crowd,
+faces of those who were not finding what they wanted, faces of all those
+to whom life denied life. And then Katie thought of a man who had lived &
+long time before, a man of whom her uncle spoke lovingly in his sermons
+as Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God. She thought of Ann's
+father--how far he had gone from a religion of love. Then came back to
+her lovable uncle. Well, what of him?
+
+Charm of personality, a sense of humor, a comfortable view of living (for
+himself and his kind) did not seem the final word.
+
+"Uncle," Katie asked quietly, "do you ever think much about Christ?"
+
+In his astonishment the Bishop dropped his cigar.
+
+"What a strange man he must have been," she murmured.
+
+"Kindly explain yourself," said he curtly.
+
+"He seemed to think so much about people. Just people. And chiefly people
+who were down on their luck. I don't believe he would have been much good
+at raising money. He had such a queer way of going around where people
+worked, talking with them about their work. If he were here now, and were
+to do that, I wonder if he'd help much in 'stemming the rising tide of
+socialism' What a blessing it is for our institutions," Katie concluded,
+"that he's not anywhere around."
+
+The Bishop's hand shook. "I had not expected," he said, "that my own
+niece, my favorite niece--indeed, the favorite member of my family--was
+here to--revile me."
+
+"Uncle--forgive me! But isn't it bigger than that thing of being members
+of the same family--hurting each other's feelings? Oh uncle!" she burst
+forth, no longer able to hold back, "as you stand sometimes at the altar
+don't you hear them moaning and sobbing down underneath?"
+
+He looked at her sharply, with some alarm.
+
+"Oh no," she laughed, "not going crazy. Just trying to think a little
+about things. But don't you ever hear them, uncle? I should think they
+might--bother you sometimes."
+
+"Really, Katherine," he said stiffly, "this is most--annoying. Hear whom
+moaning and sobbing?"
+
+"Those people! The worn out shop girls and broken down men and women and
+diseased children that your church is built right on top of!"
+
+Not the words but the sob behind them moved him to ask gently: "Katie
+dear, what is it? What's the trouble?"
+
+Her eyes were swimming. "Uncle--it's the misery of the world! It's the
+people who aren't where they belong! It's the lives ruined through
+blunders--it's the cruelty--the needless _cruelty_ of it all." She leaned
+forward, the tears upon her cheeks. "Uncle, how can you? You have a
+mind--a kind heart. But what good are they? If you believe the things you
+say you believe--oh you think you believe them--but you don't seem to
+connect them. Here to-night we've been talking about the forms of the
+church--finances of the church--and humanity is in _need_, uncle--bodily
+need--and oh the _heart_ need! Why don't you go and see? Why you've only
+to look! What are your puny little problems of the church compared with
+people's lives? And yet you--cut off--detached--save in so far as feeding
+on them goes--claim to be following in the footsteps of a man who
+followed in _their_ footsteps--a man who went about seeing how people
+lived--finding out what troubled them--trying--" She sank back with a
+sob. "I didn't mean to--but I simply _can't understand it._ Can't
+understand how you _can_."
+
+She hid her face. _Those faces_--they passed and passed.
+
+He had risen and was walking about the room. After a moment he stopped
+and cleared his throat. "If I didn't think, Katherine, that something had
+happened to almost derange you, I should not have permitted you to
+continue these ravings."
+
+She raised her head defiantly. "Truths people don't want to hear are
+usually disposed of as ravings!"
+
+"Now if I may be permitted a word. Your indictment is not at all new,
+though your heat in making it would indicate you believed yourself to be
+saying something never said before--"
+
+"I know it's been said before! I'm more interested in knowing how it's
+been answered."
+
+"You have never seemed sufficiently interested in the affairs of the
+church, Katherine, for one to think of seriously discussing our charities
+with you--"
+
+"Uncle, do you know what your charities make me think of?"
+
+He had resumed his chair--and cigar. "No," he said coldly, "I do not
+know what they make you 'think of.' I was attempting to tell you what
+they were."
+
+"I know what they are. The idea that comes to my mind has a rather
+vulgar--"
+
+"Oh, pray do not hesitate, Katherine. You have not been speaking what I
+would call delicately."
+
+"Your charities are like waving a scented handkerchief over the
+stock-yards. Or like handing out after-dinner mints to a mob of
+starving men."
+
+"You're quite the wrong end there--as is usual with you agitators," he
+replied comfortably. "We don't give them mints. We give them soup."
+
+"_Giving_ them soup--even if you did--is the mint end. Why don't you give
+them jobs?"
+
+He spread out his hands in gesture of despair. "What a bore a little
+learning can make of one! My dear niece, I deeply regret to be compelled
+to inform you that there aren't 'jobs' enough to go around."
+
+"Why aren't there?"
+
+"Why the obvious reason would seem, Katie," he replied patiently, "that
+there are too many of them wanting them."
+
+"And as usual, the obvious reason is not it. There are too many of you
+and me--that's the trouble. They don't have the soup because they must
+furnish us the mints." It was Katie who had risen now and was walking
+about the room. Her cheeks were blazing. "I tell you, uncle, I feel it's
+a disgrace the way we live--taking everything and doing nothing. I feel
+positively cheap about it. The army and the church and all the other
+useless things--"
+
+"I do not agree with you that the army is useless and I certainly cannot
+permit you to say the church is."
+
+"You'll not be able to stop other people from saying it!"
+
+He seemed about to make heated reply, but instead sank back with an
+amused smile. "Katie, your learning sounds very suspiciously as though
+it were put on last night. I feel like putting up a sign--'Fresh
+Paint--Keep Off.'"
+
+"Well at any rate it's not mouldy!"
+
+"At college I roomed with a chap who had a way of discovering things,
+getting in a fine glow of discovery over things everybody else had known.
+He would wake me out of a sound sleep to tell me something I had heard
+the week before."
+
+"And it's trying to be waked out of a sound sleep, isn't it, uncle?" she
+flashed back at him.
+
+It ended with his kindly assuring her that he was glad she had begun to
+think about the problems of the world; that no one knew better than he
+that there was a social problem--and a grave one; that men of the church
+had written some excellent things on the subject--he would send her some
+of them. Indeed, he would be glad to do all in his power to help her to
+a better understanding of things. He was convinced, he said soothingly,
+that when she had gone a little farther into them she would see them
+more sanely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+Katie was back home; or, more accurately, she was back at Wayne's
+quarters, where they could perhaps remain for a month or two longer.
+
+And craving some simple, natural thing, something that could not make the
+heart ache, she went out that afternoon to play golf. The physical Kate,
+Katie of the sound body, was delighted to be back playing golf. Every
+little cell sang its song of rejoicing--rejoicing in emancipation from
+the ill-smelling crowds, return to the open air and the good green earth.
+
+It seemed a saving thing that they could so rejoice.
+
+Katie was reading the little book on man's evolution which the man who
+was having much to do with her evolution had--it seemed long ago--sent
+her in the package marked "Danger." She had finished the book about women
+and was just looking through the one on evolution on the day Caroline
+Osborne's car had stopped at her door. That began a swift series of
+events leaving small place for reading. But when, that last day they were
+together in Chicago, she asked him about something to read, he suggested
+a return to that book. There seemed wisdom and kindness in the
+suggestion. The story of evolution was to the mind what the game of golf
+was to the body. With the life about her pressing in too close there was
+something freeing and saving in that glimpse of herself as part of all
+the life there had ever been. Because the crowds had seemed the all--were
+suffocating her--something in that vastness of vision was as fresh air
+after a stifling room. It was not that it did away with the crowds--made
+her think they did not matter; they were, after all, the more
+vital--imperative--but she had more space in which to see them, was given
+a chance to understand them rather than be blindly smothered by them.
+
+For a number of years Katie had known that there was such a thing as
+evolution. It had something to do with an important man named Darwin. He
+got it up. It was the idea that we came from monkeys. The monkey was not
+Katie's favorite animal and she would have been none too pleased with the
+idea had it not been that there was something so delicious about solemn
+people like her Aunt Elizabeth and proper people like Clara having come
+from them. She was willing to stand it herself, just because if she came
+from them they did, too. She had assumed all along that she believed in
+Darwin and that people who did not believe in him were benighted. But the
+chief reason she had for believing in him was that the church had not
+believed in him. That was through neither malice nor conviction as
+regards the church, but merely because it was exciting to have some one
+disagreeing with it. It had thrilled her as "fearless," She had always
+meant to find out more about evolution, she had a hazy idea that there
+was a great deal more to it than just the fact of having come from
+monkeys, but she led such a busy life--bridge and things--that there was
+never time and so it remained a thing she believed in and was some day
+going to find out about.
+
+Now she was furious with herself and with everybody connected
+with her for having lived so much of her life shut out from the
+knowledge--vision--that made life so vast and so splendid. It was like
+having lived all one's life in sight of the sea and being so busy walking
+around a silly little lake in a park that there was no time to turn one's
+face seaward. She wondered what she would think of a person who said the
+little toy lake kept her so busy there was never a minute to turn around
+and take a good look at the sea!
+
+Katie had always loved the great world of living things--the fishes and
+birds--all animals--all things that grew. They had always called to her
+imagination--she used to make up stories about them. She saw now that
+their real story was a thousand-fold more wonderful--more the story--than
+anything she had been able to invent. She would give much to have known
+it long before. She felt that she had missed much. There was something
+humiliating in the thought of having lived one's life without knowing
+what life was. It made one seem such a dead thing. Now she was on fire to
+know all about it.
+
+She smiled as it suggested to her what her uncle had said a few days
+before of the fresh paint. She supposed there was some truth in it, that
+one who was conserving the past must find something raw and ludicrous in
+her state of mind. Her passion to fairly devour knowledge would probably
+bring to many of them the same amused smile it had brought to her uncle.
+But it was surprising how little she minded the smile. She was too intent
+on the things she would devour.
+
+Her glimpse into this actual story of life brought the first purely
+religious feeling she had ever known. It even brought the missionary
+fervor, which, as they sat down to rest, she exercised upon Worth, who
+had been proudly filling the office of caddy. She told him that she was
+going to tell him the most wonderful fairy story there had ever been in
+the world. And the thing that made it most wonderful of all was that,
+while it was just like a fairy story in being wonderful, it was every bit
+true. And then she told him a little of the great story of how one thing
+became another thing, how everything grew out of something else, how it
+had been doing that for millions of years, how he was what he was then
+because through all those years one thing had changed, grown, into
+something else.
+
+As she told it it seemed so noble a thing to be telling a child, so
+much purer and more dignified--to say nothing of more stimulating--than
+the evasive tales of life employed in the attempt to thwart her
+childish mind.
+
+Worth was upon her with a hundred questions. _How_ did a worm become
+something that wasn't a worm? Did it know it was going to do it? And why
+did one worm go one way and in a lot of million years be a little boy
+and another worm go another way and just never be anything but a worm?
+Did she think in another hundred million years that little bird up there
+would be something else? Would _they_ be anything else? And why--?
+
+She saw that she had let herself in for a whole new world of whys. One
+thing was certain: if she were to remain with Worth she would have to
+find out more about evolution. Her knowledge was pitifully incommensurate
+to his whys.
+
+But it was beautiful to her the way his mind reached out to it. He was
+lying on his stomach, head propped up on hands, in an almost prayerful
+attitude before an ant hill. Did she think those little ants knew that
+they were alive? Would they ever be anything else? He wanted to be told
+more stories about things becoming other things, seemed intoxicated with
+that idea of the constant becoming.
+
+"But, Aunt Kate," he cried, "mama told me that God made me!"
+
+"Why so He did, Worthie--that is, I suppose He did--but He didn't just
+make you out of nothing."
+
+He lay there on the grass in silence for a long time, looking at the
+world about him--thinking. After a while he was singing a little song.
+This was the song:
+
+"Once I was a little worm--
+Long--long--ago."
+
+Katie smiled in thinking how scandalized Clara would be to have heard
+the story just told her son, story moving him to sing a vulgar song about
+having been a horrid little worm. It would be Clara's notion of propriety
+to tell Worth that the doctor brought him in his motor car and expect his
+mind, that wonderful, plastic little mind of his, to be proper enough to
+rest content with that lucid exposition of the wonder of life.
+
+The time was near for Clara's six months of Worth to begin. Katie had
+promised she would bring him to her wherever she was; and Clara was in
+Paris and meaning to remain there. It meant that Worth would spend the
+winter in Paris, away from them; from time to time--as the custom of the
+city dictated--he would be taken for perfunctory little walks in the
+_Bois_ and would be told to "run and play" if he asked indelicate
+questions concerning the things of life.
+
+In the light of this story of the ways of growth the arrangement about
+Worth seemed an unnatural and a brutal thing.
+
+She did not believe that, as a matter of fact, Clara wanted Worth. The
+maternal passion was less strong in Clara than the passion for
+_lingerie_. But she wanted Worth with her for six months because that
+kept him from Wayne and Katie for six months and she knew that they
+did want him.
+
+The poor little fellow's summer had not been what Katie had planned. Part
+of the time he had been with his father and part of the time with
+her--that thing of division again, and as neither of them had been happy
+any of the time Worth had had to suffer for it. He seemed to have to
+suffer so much through the fact that grown-up people did not know how to
+manage their lives.
+
+Suddenly he sat up. "Aunt Kate," he asked, "when's Miss Ann coming back?"
+
+"I don't know, dear."
+
+"Well where _is_ she?"
+
+"She's been--called away."
+
+"Well I wish she'd come back. I like Miss Ann, Aunt Kate."
+
+"Yes, dear; we all do."
+
+"She tells nice stories, too. Only they're about fairies that are just
+fairies--not worms and things that are really so. Do you suppose Miss Ann
+knows, Aunt Kate, that she used to be a frog?"
+
+Katie laughed and tried to elucidate her point about the frog. But she
+wondered what difference it might not have made had Ann known that, as
+Worth put it, she used to be a frog. With Ann, fairy stories would have
+to be about things not real. All Ann's life it had been so. It suddenly
+seemed that it might have made all the difference in the world had Ann
+known that the things most wonderful were the things that were.
+
+Or rather, had the world in which Ann lived cared to know real things for
+precious things, the desire for life as the most radiant thing that had
+ever been upon the earth. Ann would have found the world a different
+place had men known life for the majestic thing it was, seen that back of
+what her uncle called the "splendid heritage of the country's
+institutions" was the vastly more splendid heritage of the institution of
+life. Letting the former shut them from the latter was being too busy
+with the toy lake to look out at the sea.
+
+Seeing Ann as part of all the life that had ever been upon the earth she
+became, not infinitesimal, but newly significant. Widened outlook brought
+deepened feeling. Newly understanding, she sat there brooding over Ann
+anew, pain in the perfection of her understanding.
+
+But new courage. Life had persisted through so much, was so triumphant.
+The larger conception lent its glow to the paling belief that Ann would
+persist, triumph.
+
+"Aunt Kate," Worth burst forth, "let's take the boat and go up and find
+the man that mends the boats."
+
+Aunt Kate blushed. "Oh no, dearie, we couldn't do that."
+
+"Why we did do it once," argued Worth.
+
+"I know, but we can't do it now."
+
+"I don't see why not."
+
+No, Worth didn't see.
+
+"I just want to ask him, Aunt Kate, if he knows that he used to live
+in a tree."
+
+"Oh, he knows it," she laughed.
+
+"He knows everything," said Worth.
+
+"Worthie, is that why you like him? 'Cause he knows everything? Or do you
+like him--just because you like him?"
+
+"I like him because he knows everything--but mostly I like him just
+because I like him."
+
+"Same here," breathed Aunt Kate.
+
+The man who mended the boats was coming to see her that night. Perhaps
+golf and evolution should not grow arrogant, after all.
+
+He had been strange about coming; when she talked with him over the
+'phone he had hesitated at the suggestion and finally said, with a
+defiance she could not see the situation called for, that he would like
+to come. In Chicago he had once said to her: "There's too much gloom
+around you now for me to contribute the story of my life. But please
+remember that that was why I didn't tell it."
+
+She wondered if the "story of his life" had anything to do with his
+hesitancy in coming to see her. Surely he would have no commonplace
+notions about "different spheres," though he had mentioned them, and with
+bitterness. He was especially hostile to the army, had more than once
+hurt her in his hostility. She would not have resented his attacking it
+as an institution, that she would expect from his philosophy, but it was
+a sort of personal contempt for the army and its people she had resented,
+almost as she would a contemptuous attitude toward her own family.
+
+She had contended that he was unjust; that a lack of sympathy with the
+ends of the army--basis of it--should not bring him to a prejudiced
+attitude toward its people. She maintained that officers of the army were
+a higher type than civilians of the same class. He had told her, almost
+roughly, that he didn't think she knew anything about it, and she had
+replied, heatedly, that she would like to know why she wouldn't know more
+about it than he! In the end he said he was sorry to have hurt her when
+there was so much else to hurt her, but had not retracted what he had
+said, or even admitted the possibility of mistake.
+
+It seemed that one of the worst things about "classes" was that they
+inevitably meant misunderstanding. They bred antagonism, and that
+prejudice. People didn't know each other.
+
+Considering it now, she wondered, though feeling traitorous to him in the
+wondering, if the man who mended the boats might shrink from anything so
+distinctly social as calling upon her.
+
+Their meetings theretofore had been on a bigger and a sterner basis; she
+had missed a few of the little niceties of consideration, a few of those
+perfunctory and yet curiously vital courtesies to which she had all her
+life been accustomed as a matter of course from her army men; but it had
+been as if they were merely leaving them behind for things larger and
+deeper, as if their background was the real world rather than world of
+perfunctory things. From him she had a consideration, not perfunctory,
+but in the mood of the things they were sharing. That sense of sharing
+big things, things real and rude, had swept them out of the world of
+artificial things. Now did he perhaps hold back in timidity from that
+world of the trivial things?
+
+She put it from her, disliking herself as of the trivial things in
+letting it suggest itself at all. Expecting him to be just like the
+men she had known would be expecting the sea to behave like that lake
+in the park.
+
+That night she put on her most attractive gown, a dress sometimes gray
+and sometimes cloudy blues and greens, itself like the sea, and finding
+in Katie a more mysterious quality than her openness would usually
+suggest. Feeling called upon to make some account to herself for dressing
+more than occasion would seem to demand, she told herself that she must
+get the poor old thing worn out and get something new.
+
+But it was not a poor old thing, and the last thing Katie really wanted
+was to succeed in getting it worn out.
+
+As she dressed she was thinking of Ann's pleasure in clothes. There were
+times when it had seemed a not altogether likeable vanity. It was
+understandable--lovable--after having been to Centralia, after knowing.
+So many things were understandable and lovable after knowing.
+
+She wished she might call across the hall and ask Ann to come in and
+fasten her dress. She would like to chat with her about the way she had
+done her hair--all those intimate little things they had countless times
+talked about so gayly.
+
+She walked over into Ann's room--room in which Ann had taken such pride
+and pleasure. Ann had loved the things on the dressing-table, she had
+more than once seen her fairly caressing those pretty ivory things. She
+wondered if Ann had anything resembling a dressing-table--what she
+wore--how she managed.
+
+Those were the little worries about Ann forever haunting her, as they
+would a mother who had a child away from home. New vision of the
+immensity of life could save her from giving destroying place to that
+sense of the woe of the world, but a conception of the wonders of the
+centuries could not keep out the gnawing fear that Ann might not be
+getting enough to eat.
+
+There was a complexity in her mood of that night--happiness and sadness
+so close as at times to be indistinguishable--the whole of it making for
+a sense of the depth of life.
+
+But their evening was constrained. Katie blamed the dress for part of it,
+vexed with herself for having put it on. She had wanted to be
+attractive--not suggest the unattainable.
+
+And that was what something seemed suggesting. He appeared less ill at
+ease than morose. Katie herself, after having been so happy in his
+coming, was, now that he was there, uncontrollably depressed. They talked
+of a variety of things--in the main, the things she had been reading--but
+something had happened to that wonderful thing which had grown warm in
+their hearts as they walked those last two blocks.
+
+Even the things of which they talked had lost their radiance. What did it
+matter whether the universe was wonderful or not if the wonderful thing
+in one's own heart was to be denied life?
+
+From the first, it had been as if the things of which they talked were
+things sweeping them together, they were in the grip of the power and the
+wonder of those things, wrung by the tragedy of them, exalted by the
+hope--in it all, by it all, united. It was as if the whole sea of
+experience and emotion, suffering and aspiration, was driving, holding,
+them together.
+
+So it had been all along.
+
+But not tonight. It was now--or at least so it seemed to Katie--as if
+those forces had let them go. What had been as a great sea surging around
+their hearts was now just things to talk about.
+
+It left her desolate. And as she grew unhappy, she forced her gaiety and
+that seemed to put him the farther away.
+
+The two different worlds had sent Ann away; was it, in a way she was
+unable to cope with, likewise to send him away?
+
+Watts passed through the hall. She saw him glance out at the soldier
+loweringly and after that he grew more morose, almost sullenly so.
+
+It seemed foolish to talk of one's being free when held by things one
+could not even see.
+
+It was just when she was feeling so lonely and miserable she wished he
+would go that the telephone rang and central told her that Chicago was
+trying to get her.
+
+It was in the manner of the old days that she turned to him and asked
+what he thought it could be.
+
+The suggestion--possibility--swept them back to the old basis, the old
+relationship. Katie grew excited, unnerved, and he talked to her
+soothingly while she waited for central to call again.
+
+They spoke of what it probably was; her brother was in Chicago, Katie
+told him, and of course it was he, and something about his own affairs.
+Perhaps he had news of when he would be ordered away. Yes, without doubt
+that was it.
+
+But there was a consciousness of dissembling. They were drawn together by
+the possibility they did not mention, drawn together in the very thing of
+not mentioning it.
+
+As in those tense moments they tried to talk of other things, they were
+keyed high in the consciousness of not talking of the real thing. And in
+that there was suggestion of the other thing of which they were not
+talking. It was all inexplicably related: the excitement, the tenseness,
+the waiting, the dissembling.
+
+Katie had never been more lovely than as she sat there with her hand
+on the telephone: flushed, stirred, expectant--something stealing back
+to her eyes, something both pleading and triumphant in Katie's eyes
+just then.
+
+The man sitting close beside her at the telephone desk scarcely took his
+eyes from her face.
+
+When the bell rang again and her hand shook as it took down the receiver
+he lay a steadying hand upon her arm.
+
+At first there was nothing more than a controversy as to who had the
+line. In her impatience, she rose; he rose, too, standing beside her.
+
+"Here's your party," said central at last.
+
+Her "party" was Wayne.
+
+But something was still the matter on the line; she could not get what
+Wayne was trying to tell her.
+
+As her excitement became more difficult to control the man at her side
+kept speaking to her--touching her--soothingly.
+
+At last she could hear Wayne. "You hear me, Katie?"
+
+"Oh yes--_yes_--what is it?"
+
+"I want to tell you--"
+
+It was swallowed up in a buzzing on the line.
+
+Then central's voice came clear and crisp. "Your party is trying to tell
+you that _Ann_ is found."
+
+"Oh--" gasped Katie, and lost all color--"Oh--"
+
+"Katie--?" That was Wayne again.
+
+"Oh _yes_, Wayne?"
+
+"I have found her. She is well--that is, will be well. She is all
+right--going to be all right. I'll write it all to-morrow. It's all over,
+Katie. You don't have to worry any more."
+
+The next instant the telephone was upside down on the table and Katie,
+sobbing, was in his arms. He was holding her close; and as her sobs grew
+more violent he kissed her hair, murmured loving things. Suddenly she
+raised her head--lifting her face to his. He kissed her; and all the
+splendor of those eons of life was Katie's then.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Captain Jones had come down from Fort Sheridan late that afternoon. He
+had been in Chicago for several days, as a member of a board assembled up
+at Fort Sheridan. The work was over and he would return to the Arsenal
+that night.
+
+But he was not to go until midnight. He would have dinner and go to
+the theater with some of the friends with whom he had been in those
+last few days.
+
+He wished it were otherwise. He was in no mood for them. He would far
+rather have been alone.
+
+He had a little time alone in his room before dinner and sat there
+smoking, thinking, looking at the specks of men and women moving about in
+the streets way down there below.
+
+He was in no humor that night to keep to the everlasting talk about army
+affairs, army grievances and schemes, all those things of a world within
+a world treated as if larger than the whole of the world. The last few
+days had shown him anew how their hold on him was loosening.
+
+There seemed such a thing as the army habit of mind. Within their own
+domain was orderliness, discipline, efficiency, subservience to the
+collectivity, pride in it, devotion to it--many things of mind and
+character sadly needed in the chaotic world without. But army men lacked
+perspective; in isolation they had lost their sense of proportion, of
+relationships. They had not a true vision of themselves as part of a
+whole. They had, on the other hand, unconsciously fallen into the way of
+assuming the whole existed for the part, that they were larger than the
+thing they were meant to serve. Their whole scale was so proportioned;
+their whole sense of adjustment so perverted.
+
+They lacked flexibility--openness--all-sides-aroundness.
+
+Life in the army disciplined one in many things valuable in life. It
+failed in giving a true sense of the values of life.
+
+He could not have said why it was those inflated proportions irritated
+him so. They lent an unreality to everything. They made for false
+standards. And more and more the thing which mattered to him was reality.
+
+He tried to pull away from the things that thought would lure him into.
+He had not the courage to let himself think of her tonight.
+
+He feared he had not increased his popularity in the last few days. At a
+dinner the night before a colonel had put an end to a discussion on war,
+in which several of the younger officers showed dangerous symptoms of
+hospitality to the civilian point of view, with the pious pronouncement:
+"War was ordained by God."
+
+"But man pays the war tax," he had not been able to resist adding, and
+the Colonel had not joined in the laugh.
+
+He found it wearisome the way the army remained so smug in its assumption
+that God stood right behind it. When worsted on economic grounds--and
+perhaps driven also from "survival of the fittest" shelter--a pompous
+retreat could always be effected to divinity.
+
+It was that same colonel who, earlier in the evening, had thus ended a
+discussion on the unemployed. "The poor ye have always with you," said
+the Colonel, delicately smacking his lips over his champagne and gently
+turning the conversation to the safer topic of high explosives.
+
+He turned impatiently from thought of it to the men and women far down
+below. He was always looking now at crowds of men and women, always
+hoping for a familiar figure in those crowds.
+
+With all the baffling unreality there had been around her, she seemed to
+express reality. She made him want it. She made him want life. Made him
+feel what he was missing--realize what he had never had.
+
+It seemed that if he did not find her he would not find life.
+
+She, too, had wanted life. Her quest had been for life--that he knew. And
+he wanted to find her that he might tell her he understood, tell
+her--what he had never told any one--that all his life he, too, had
+dreamed of a something somewhere.
+
+And he was growing the farther apart from his army friends because he
+had come to think of them as standing between.
+
+During the summer he had seen. In the mornings when they were going to
+work, in the evenings when they were going home, he had many times been
+upon the streets with the people who worked. He could not any longer
+regard the enlargement of the army, its organization and problems as the
+most vital thing in the world. It did not seem to him that what the world
+wanted was a more deadly rifle. His lip curled a little as he looked down
+at the men and women below and considered how little difference it made
+to them whether rifles were improved or not. And so many things did make
+difference with them--they needed improvements on so many things--that to
+be giving one's life to perfecting instruments of destruction struck him
+as a sorry vocation.
+
+It made him feel very distinctly apart.
+
+He knew of no class of men more isolated from the real war of the world
+than were the men of the army. They were tied up in their own war of
+competition--competition in preparedness for war. They were frantically
+occupied in the creation of a Frankenstein. They would so perfect
+destruction as to destroy themselves. Meanwhile their blood had grown so
+hot in their war of competition that they were in prime condition for
+persuading themselves a real war awaited them. This hot blood found its
+way into much talk of hardihood and strenuousness, vigor, martial
+virtues, "the steeps of life," "the romance of history"--all calculated
+to raise the temperature of tax-paying blood. So successful was the
+self-delusion of the militarist that sanity appeared mollycoddelism.
+
+Their greatest fear was fear of the loss of fear.
+
+And now they were threatened by colorless economists who were
+mollycoddelistically making clear that the "stern reality" was the giant
+hallucination.
+
+It seemed rather close to farce.
+
+That night he was going back. Katie, too, had gone. For the first time
+that summer neither of them would be there. It seemed giving up.
+
+Loneliness reached out into places vast and barren in the thought that
+both in the things of the heart and the affairs of men he seemed destined
+to remain apart.
+
+He looked far more the dreamer than the man of warfare as he sat there,
+his face, which was so finely sensitive as sometimes to be called cold,
+saddened with the light of dreams which know themselves for dreams alone.
+
+That very first night, night when she had been so shy, he had felt in
+her that which he called the real thing, which he knew for the great
+thing, which had been, for him, the thing unattainable. And with all
+her timidity, aloofness, elusiveness, he had felt an inexplicable
+nearness to her.
+
+He had found out something about the conditions girls had to meet. His
+face hardened, then tightened with pain in the thought of those being the
+conditions Ann was meeting. He did not believe those conditions would go
+on many days longer if every man had to see them in relation to some one
+he cared for. "The poor ye have always with you" might then prove less
+authoritative--less satisfying--as the final word.
+
+And the other conditions--things his sort stood for--Darrett--the whole
+story--He had come to loathe the words chivalry and honor and all the
+rest of the empty terms that resounded so glibly against false standards.
+
+Something was wrong with the world and he could not see that improving a
+rifle was going to go very far toward setting it right.
+
+And there was springing up within him, even in his loneliness and gloom,
+a passion to be doing something that would help set it right.
+
+An older officer with whom he had been talking that day had spoken
+lovingly of his father, under whom he had served; spoken of his hardihood
+and integrity, his manliness and soldierliness. As he thought of it now
+it seemed to him that just because he _was_ his father's son--had in him
+the blood of the soldier--he should help fight the real battles of the
+day--the long stern battles of peace.
+
+His father had served, faithfully and well. He, too, would like to serve.
+But yesterday's needs were not to-day's needs, nor were the methods of
+yesterday desirable, even possible, for to-day. What could be farther
+from serving one's own day than rendering to it the dead forms of what
+had been the real service to a day gone by?
+
+There came a curious thought that to give up the things of war might be
+the only way to save the things that war had left him. That perhaps he
+could only transmit his heritage by recasting the form of giving.
+
+Looking out across the miles of the city's roofs, hearing the rumble of
+the city as it came faintly up to him, watching the people hurrying to
+and fro, there was something puerile in the argument that men any longer
+needed war to fill their lives, must have the war fear to keep them from
+softness and degeneration. Thinking of the problems of that very city, it
+seemed men need not worry greatly about having nothing to fight for, no
+stimulus to manhood.
+
+Men and women! Those men and women passing back and forth and all the
+millions of their kind, they were what counted. The things that
+mattered to them were the things that mattered. Their needs the things
+to fight for.
+
+So he reflected and drifted, brushing now this, now that, in thought
+and fancy.
+
+Weary--lonely--he dreamed a dream, dream such as the weary and the lonely
+have dreamed before, will dream again. Too utterly alone, he dreamed he
+was not alone. Heart-hungry, he dreamed of love. He dreamed of Ann. He
+had dreamed of her before, would dream of her again. Dream of her, if for
+nothing else, because he knew she had dreamed of love; because she made
+him know that it was there, because, unreasoningly, she made him hope.
+
+Her face that night at the dance--that night in the boat, when they had
+talked almost not at all, had seemed to feel no need for talking--things
+remembered blended with things desired until it seemed he could feel her
+hair brush his face, feel her breath upon his cheek, her arms about his
+neck--vivid as if given by memories instead of wooed from dreams.
+
+But the benign dream became torturing vision--vision of Ann with hands
+held out to him--going down--her wonderful eyes fearful with terror.
+
+It was that which dreaming held for him.
+
+And it seemed that he--he and his kind--all of those who stood for the
+things not real were the thing beating Ann down.
+
+Dreams gone and vision mercifully falling away there came a yearning,
+just a simple human yearning, to know where she was. He felt he could
+bear anything if only he knew that she was safe.
+
+The telephone rang. He supposed it was some of his friends--something
+about the hour for dining.
+
+He would not answer. Could not. Too sick of it all--too sore.
+
+But it kept ringing, and, habit in the ascendency, he took down
+the receiver.
+
+It was not a man's voice. It was a woman's. A faint voice--he could
+scarcely catch it.
+
+And could with difficulty reply. He did not know the voice, it was too
+faint, too far-away, but a suggestion in it made his own voice and hand
+unsteady as he said: "Yes? What is it?"
+
+"Is this--Captain Jones?"
+
+The voice was stronger, clearer. His hand grew more unsteady.
+
+"Yes," he replied in the best voice he could muster. "Yes--this is
+Captain Jones. Who is it, please?"
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"Tell me, please," he managed to say. "Is it--?"
+
+The voice came faintly back, "Why it's--Ann."
+
+The keenest joy he had ever known swept through him. To be followed by
+the most piercing fear. The voice was so faint--so unreal--what if it
+were to die away and he would have no way to get it back!
+
+It seemed he could not hold it. For an instant he was crazed with the
+sense of powerlessness. He felt it must even then be slipping back into
+the abyss from which it had emerged.
+
+Then he fought. Got himself under command; sent his own voice full and
+strong over the wire as if to give life to the voice it seemed must
+fade away.
+
+"Ann," he said firmly, authoritatively, "listen to me. No matter what
+happens--no matter what's the matter--I've got something you must hear.
+If we're cut off, call up again. Will you do that? Are you listening?"
+
+"Yes," came Ann's voice, more sure.
+
+"I've got to see you. You hear what I say? It's about Katie. You care a
+little something for Katie, don't you, Ann?"
+
+It was a sob rather than a voice came back to him.
+
+"Then tell me where I can find you."
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"Tell me where you're living--or where I can find you. Now tell me the
+truth, Ann. If you knew the condition Katie was in--"
+
+She gave him an address on a street he did not know.
+
+"Would you rather I came there? Or rather I meet you down town? Just as
+you say. Only I _must_ see you tonight."
+
+"I--I can't come down town. I'm sick."
+
+His hand on the receiver tightened. His voice, which had been almost
+harsh in its dominance, was different as he said: "Then I'll come
+there--right away."
+
+There was no reply, but he felt she was still there. "And, Ann," he said,
+very low, and far from harshly, "I want to see you, too."
+
+There was a little sob in which he faintly got "Good-bye."
+
+He sank to a chair. His face was buried in his hands. It was several
+minutes before he moved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+Children seemed to spring up from the sidewalk and descend from the roofs
+as his cab, after a long trip through crowded streets with which three
+months before he would have been totally unfamiliar, stopped at the
+number Ann had given. All the way over he had been seeing children: dirty
+children, pale-faced children, children munching at things and children
+looking as though they had never had anything to munch at--children
+playing and children crying--it seemed the children's part of town. The
+men and women of tomorrow were growing up in a part of the city too
+loathsome for the civilized man and woman of today to set foot in. He was
+too filled with thought of Ann--the horror of its being where she
+lived--to let the bigger thought of it brush him more than fleetingly,
+but it did occur to him that there was still a frontier--and that the men
+who could bring about smokeless cities--and odorless ones--would be
+greater public servants than the men who had achieved smokeless powder.
+Riding through that part of town it would scarcely suggest itself to any
+one that what the country needed was more battleships.
+
+The children still waited as he rang an inhospitable doorbell, as
+interested in life as if life had been treating them well.
+
+He had to ring again before a woman came to the door with a cup in her
+hand which she was wiping on a greasy towel.
+
+She looked very much as the bell had sounded.
+
+She let him in to a place which it seemed might not be a bad field for
+some of the army's boasted experts on sanitation. It was a place to make
+one define civilization as a thing that reduces smell.
+
+Several heads were stuck out of opening doors and with each opening
+door a wave stole out from an unlovely life. Captain Wayneworth Jones,
+U. S. Army, dressed for dining at a place where lives are better
+protected against lives, was a strange center for those waves from
+lives of struggle.
+
+"She the girl that's sick?" the woman demanded in response to his inquiry
+for Miss Forrest.
+
+He replied that he feared she was ill and was told to go to the third
+floor and turn to the right. It was the second door.
+
+He hesitated, coloring.
+
+"Would you be so kind as to tell her I am here? I think perhaps she may
+prefer to see me--down here."
+
+The woman stared, then laughed. She looked like an evil woman as she
+laughed, but perhaps a laughing saint would look evil with two front
+teeth gone.
+
+"Well we ain't got no _parlor_ for the young ladies to see their
+young men in," she said mockingly. "And if you climbed as many stairs
+as I did--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said he, and started up the stairway.
+
+On the second floor were more waves from lives of struggle. The matter
+would be solemnly taken up in Congress if it were soldiers who were
+housed in the ill-smelling place. Evidently Congress did not take women
+and children and disabled civilians under the protecting wing of its
+indignation.
+
+Wet clothes were hanging down from the third floor. They fanned back and
+forth the fumes of cabbage and grease. He grew sick, not at the thing
+itself, but at thought of its being where he was to find Ann.
+
+Though the fact that he was to find her made all the rest of it--the fact
+that people lived that way--even the fact of her living that way--things
+that mattered but dimly.
+
+As he looked at the woman in greasy wrapper who was shaking out the wet
+clothes he had a sudden mocking picture of Ann as she had been that night
+at the dance.
+
+The woman's manner in staring at him as he knocked at Ann's door
+infuriated him.
+
+But when the door was opened--by Ann--he instantly forgot all outside.
+
+He closed the door and stood leaning against it, looking at her. For the
+moment that was all that mattered. And in that moment he knew how much it
+mattered--had mattered all along. Even how Ann looked was for the moment
+of small consequence in comparison with the fact that Ann was there.
+
+But he saw that she was indeed ill--worn--feverish.
+
+"You are not well," were his first words, gently spoken.
+
+She shook her head, her eyes brimming over.
+
+He looked about the room. It was evident she had been lying on the bed.
+
+"I want you to lie down," he said, his voice gentle as a woman's to a
+child. "You know you don't mind me. I come as one of the family."
+
+He helped her back to the bed; smoothed her pillow; covered her with the
+miserable spread.
+
+Ann hid her face in the pillow, sobbing.
+
+He pulled up the one chair the room afforded, laid his hand upon her
+hair, and waited. His face was white, his lips trembling.
+
+"It's all over now," he murmured at last. "It's all over now."
+
+She shook her head and sobbed afresh.
+
+His heart grew cold. What did she mean? A fear more awful than any which
+had ever presented itself shot through him. But she raised her head and
+as she looked at him he knew that whatever she meant it was not that.
+
+"What is it about Katie?" she whispered.
+
+"Why, Ann, can't you guess what it is about Katie? Didn't you know what
+Katie must suffer in your leaving like that?"
+
+"I left so she wouldn't have to suffer."
+
+"Well you were all wrong, Ann. You have caused us--" But as, looking into
+her face, he saw what she had suffered, he was silenced.
+
+She was feverish; her eyes were large and deep and perilously bright,
+her temples and cheeks cruelly thin. But what hurt him most were not the
+marks of illness and weakness. It was the harassed look. Fear.
+
+_Fear_--that thing so invaluable in building character.
+
+Thought of the needlessness of it wrung from him: "Ann--how could you!"
+
+"Why I thought I was doing right," she murmured. "I thought I was
+being kind."
+
+He smiled faintly, sadly, at the irony and the bitter pity of that.
+
+"But how could you think that?" he pressed. "Not that it matters now--but
+I don't see how you could."
+
+She looked at him strangely. "Do you--know?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Then don't you see? I left to make it easy for Katie."
+
+He thought of Katie's summer. "Well your success in that direction was
+not brilliant," he said with his old dryness.
+
+Her eyes looked so hurt that he stroked her hand reassuringly, as he
+would have stroked Worth's had he hurt him. And as he touched her--it
+was a hot hand he touched--it struck him as absurd to be quibbling
+about why she had gone. She was there. He had found her. That was all
+that mattered.
+
+He became more and more conscious of how much it mattered. He wanted to
+draw her to him and tell her how much it mattered. But he did
+not--dared not.
+
+"And how did you happen to be so unkind as to call me up, Ann?" he asked
+with a faint smile.
+
+"I wanted--I wanted to hear about Katie. And I wanted"--her eyes had
+filled, her chin was trembling--"I was lonesome. I wanted to hear
+your voice."
+
+His heart leaped. For the moment he was not able to keep the tenderness
+from his look.
+
+"And I knew you were there because I saw it in the paper. A woman brought
+back some false hair to be exchanged--I sell false hair," said Ann, with
+a wan little smile and unconsciously touching her own hair--"and what she
+wanted exchanged--though we don't exchange it--was wrapped up in a
+newspaper, and as I looked down at it I happened to see your name. Wasn't
+that funny?"
+
+"Very humorous," he replied, almost curtly.
+
+"I had been sick all day--oh, for lots of days. But I was trying to keep
+on. I had lost two other places by staying away for being sick--and I
+didn't dare--just didn't dare--lose this one. You don't know how
+_afraid_ you get--how frightened you are--when you're afraid you're
+going to be sick."
+
+The fear--sick fear that fear of sickness can bring--that was in her eyes
+as she talked of it suddenly infuriated him. He did not know what or whom
+he I was furious at--but it was on Ann it broke.
+
+He rose, overturning his unsteady chair as he did so, and, seeking
+command, looked from the window which looked down into a squalid court.
+The wretchedness of the court whipped his rage. "Well for God's sake," he
+burst forth, "what did you _do_ it for! Of all the unheard
+of--outrageous--unpardonable--What did you _mean_"--turning savagely
+upon her--"by selling false hair?"
+
+"Why I sold false hair," said Ann, a little sullenly, "so I could live."
+
+"Well, didn't you know," he demanded passionately, "that you could _live_
+with _us_?"
+
+She shook her head. "I didn't think I had any right to--after--what
+happened."
+
+He came back to her. "Ann," he asked gently, "haven't you a 'right
+to'--if we want you to?"
+
+She looked at him again in that strange way. "Are you sure--you know?"
+
+"Very sure," he answered briefly.
+
+"And do you mean to say you would want me--anyhow?" she whispered.
+
+He turned away that she might not see how badly and in what sense he
+wanted her. His whole sense of fitness--his training--was against her
+seeing it then.
+
+The pause, the way she was looking at him when he turned back to her,
+made restraint more and more difficult. But suddenly she changed, her
+face darkening as she said, smolderingly: "No--I'm not _that_ weak. If I
+can't live--I'll _die_. Other people make a living! Other girls get
+along! Katie would. Katie could do it."
+
+She sat up; he could see the blood throbbing in her neck and at her
+temples. She was gripping her hands. She looked so frail--so helpless.
+
+"But Katie is strong, Ann," he said soothingly.
+
+"Yes--in every way. And I'm not." She turned away, her face
+twitching. "Why I seem to be just the kind of a person that has to be
+taken care of!"
+
+He did not deny it, filled with the longing to do it.
+
+"It's--it's humiliating."
+
+He would at one time have supposed that it would be, should be; would
+have held to the idea that every man and woman ought be able to make a
+living, that there was something wrong with them if they couldn't. But
+not after the things he had seen that summer. The something wrong was
+somewhere else.
+
+"And yet you don't know," Ann was saying brokenly, "how hard it is. You
+don't know--how many things there are."
+
+She turned to him impetuously. "I want to tell you! Then maybe it will
+go. I couldn't tell Katie. But I don't know--I don't know why--but I
+could tell you anything."
+
+He nodded, not clear-eyed, and took one of her hands and stroked it.
+
+Her cheeks grew more red; her eyes glitteringly bright. "You see--it's
+_men_--things like--that's what makes it hard for girls."
+
+He pressed her hand more firmly, though his own was shaking.
+
+"Katie told you--Katie must have told you about--the first of it--" She
+faltered. He drew in his breath sharply and held it for an instant. "And
+after that--" She turned upon him passionately. "_Do_ they know? _Does_
+it make a difference?"
+
+He did not get her meaning for an instant and when he did it brought the
+color to his face; he had always been a man of great reserve. But Ann
+seemed unconscious. This was the reality that realities make.
+
+He shook his head. "No. You only imagine."
+
+"No, I don't imagine. They pretend. Pretend they know."
+
+He gritted his teeth. So those were the things she had had to meet!
+
+"They lie," he said briefly. "Bluff." And for an instant he covered his
+eyes with her hand.
+
+"You see after--after that," she went on, "I couldn't go back to the
+telephone office. I don't know that I can explain why--but it seemed the
+one thing I couldn't do, so--oh I did several things--was in a store--and
+then a girl got me on the stage--in the chorus of 'Daisey-Maisey.' I
+thought perhaps I could be an actress, and that being in the chorus would
+give me a chance."
+
+She laughed bitterly. "There are lots of silly people in the world,
+aren't there?" was her one comment on her mistake.
+
+"That night--the last night--" she told it in convulsive little
+jerks--"the manager said something to me. _He_ pretended. And when he saw
+how frightened I was--and how I loathed him--it made him furious--and he
+said things--vowed things--and he kissed me--and oh he was so
+_terrible_--his face--his lips--"
+
+She hid her face, rocking back and forth. He sat on the bed beside her,
+put his arm around her as he would around Katie or Worth, holding her
+tenderly, protectingly, soothingly, his own face white, biting his lips.
+
+"He vowed things--he claimed--I knew I couldn't stay with the company. I
+was even afraid to stay until it was over that night. I had a chance to
+run away--Oh I was so _frightened_." She kept repeating--"I was so
+_frightened_.
+
+"I can't explain it--you'd have to see him--his _lips_--his thick, loose
+awful lips!"
+
+"Ann," he whispered. "Please, dear--don't talk about it--don't think
+about it!"
+
+"But I want it to go away! I don't want to be alone with it. I want
+somebody to know. I want _you_ to know."
+
+"All right," he murmured. "All right. I want to hear." His whole body was
+set for pain he knew must come.
+
+Ann's eyes were full of terror, that terror that lives after terror,
+the anguish of terror remembered. "It's awful to be alone with awful
+thoughts," she whispered. "To be shut in with something you're
+afraid of."
+
+"I know--I know," he soothed her. "But you're going to tell me. Tell
+_me_. And then you'll never be alone with it again."
+
+"I've been afraid so much," she went on sobbingly. "Alone so much--with
+things that frightened me. That night I was alone. All alone. And afraid.
+You see I went and went and went. Just to be getting _away_. And at last
+I was out in the country. And then I was afraid of _that_. I went in
+something that seemed to be a barn. Hid in some hay--"
+
+He gripped her arm as if it were more than he could stand. His face was
+colorless.
+
+"I almost went crazy. Why I think I _did_ go crazy--with fear. Being
+alone. Being afraid."
+
+He looked away from her. It seemed unfair to her to let himself see her
+like that--her face distorted--unlovely--in the memory of it.
+
+"When it came daylight I went to sleep. And when I woke up--when I woke
+up--" She was laughing and sobbing together and it was some time before
+he could quiet her. "When I woke up another man was bending over me--an
+old man--so _old_--so--
+
+"Oh, I suppose it was just that he was surprised at finding me there. But
+I thought--I hadn't got over the night before--
+
+"So again I went. Just went. Just to get away. And that was when I saw it
+was life I'd have to get away from. That there wasn't any place in it for
+me. That it meant being alone. Afraid. That it was just _that_--those
+thick awful lips--that old man's eyes--Oh no--no--not that!"
+
+She was fighting it with her hands--trying to push it away. It took both
+tenderness and sternness to quiet her.
+
+"So I hurried on,"--she told it in hurried, desperate way, as if fearful
+she would not get it all told and would be left alone with it. "To find
+a way. A place. I just wanted to find the way--the place--before
+anything else could happen. I thought all the people who looked at me
+_knew_. I thought there was nothing else for me--I thought there was
+something wrong with me--and when I remembered what I had wanted--I
+hated--hated them.
+
+"I saw water--a bridge. On the bridge I looked down. I was going to--but
+I couldn't, because a man was looking up at me. I hated him, too." She
+paused. "Though I've thought of it since. It was a queer look. I believe
+that man _knew_. And wanted to help me.
+
+"But I didn't want to be helped. Nothing could help. I just wanted to get
+away--have it over. So I hurried on--across your Island--though I didn't
+know--just looking for a place--a way. Just to have it all over."
+
+She changed on that, relaxed. Her eyes closed. "To have it all over," she
+repeated in a whisper. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. "Doesn't
+that ever seem to you a beautiful thing?"
+
+His eyes were wet. "Not any more," he whispered. "Not now."
+
+"Then again I saw water--the other side of the Island." She went back to
+it with an effort, exhausted. "I ran. I wanted to get there. Have it all
+over--before anything else could happen. I couldn't _look_--but I kept
+saying to myself it would only be a minute--only a minute--then it would
+be all over--not so bad as having things happen--being alone--afraid--"
+
+She shuddered--drew back--living it--realizing it. Her
+visioning--realizing--had gone on beyond her words, beyond the events.
+She was shuddering as if the water were actually closing over her. But
+again she was called back by Katie's voice and that look he felt he
+should not be seeing went as a faint smile formed on her lips. "Then
+Katie. Katie calling to me. Dear Katie--pretending.
+
+"I didn't want to go. I thought it was just something else. And oh how I
+wanted to get it all over!" She sobbed. "But I saw it was a girl. Sick. I
+wasn't able to help going--and then--Well, you know. Katie. How she
+fooled me. And saved me."
+
+She looked up at him, again the suggestion of a smile on her
+colorless lips. "Was there ever anybody in the world so wonderful--so
+funny--as Katie?
+
+"But at first I couldn't believe in her. I thought it must be just
+something else." She stopped, looking at him. "Why I think it wasn't till
+after I met _you_ I felt sure it couldn't be--"
+
+His arm about her tightened. He drew her closer to him. He was shaken by
+a deep sob.
+
+And so she rested, lax, murmuring about things that had happened,
+sometimes smiling faintly as she recalled them. The terror had gone, as
+if, as she had known, telling it to him had freed her. That twisted,
+unlovely look which he had tried not to see, loving her too well to wish
+to see it, had gone. She was worn, but lovely. She was resting. At peace.
+
+And so many minutes passed when she would not speak--resting, rescued.
+And then she would whisper of little things that had happened and smile a
+little and seem to drift the farther into the harbor of security into
+which she had come.
+
+He saw that--exhausted, protected, comforted--she was going to fall
+asleep. His heart was all tenderness for her as he held her, adoring her,
+sorrowing over her, guarding her. "I haven't really slept all summer,"
+she murmured at last, and after a few minutes her breathing told that
+sleep had come.
+
+But when, in trying to unfasten her collar--he longed to be doing some
+little thing for her comfort--he took his hand from hers, she started up
+in alarm and he had to put it back, reassuring her, telling her that she
+was not alone, that nothing could ever harm her again.
+
+An hour passed. And in that hour things which he would have believed
+fixed loosened and fell. It was all shaken--the whole of his thinking. It
+could never be the same again. Old things must go. New things come.
+
+Watching Ann, yearning over her, sorrowing, adoring, he saw life as what
+life had done to her. Saw it as the thing she had found.
+
+He watched the curve of her mouth. Her beautiful bosom rising and falling
+as she slept. The lovely line of her throat, the blood throbbing in her
+throat, her long lashes upon her cheek, that loveliness--beauty--that
+sweetness and tenderness--and _what it had met_. She, so exquisitely
+fashioned for love--needful of it--so perfect--so infinitely to be
+desired and cherished--and _what she had found_. He writhed under a
+picture of that old man bending over her--of that other man--bully,
+brute--thick awful lips snatching at her as a dog at meat. And then still
+another man. That first man. Darrett. _His_ friend. _His_ sort. The man
+who could so skillfully use the lure of love to rob life--
+
+As he thought of him--his charm, cleverness--how that, too, had been
+pitted against her--starved, then offered what she would have no way of
+judging--close to her loveliness, conscious of her warmth, her breath,
+the superb curves of her lovely body--thinking of what Darrett had
+found--taken--what he had left her _to_--there were several minutes when
+his brain was unpiloted, a creaking ship churning a screaming sea.
+
+And now? Had it killed it in her? Taken it? If he were to kiss her in the
+way he hungered to kiss her would it wake nothing more than that sick
+terror in her wonderful eyes? That thought became as a band of hot steel
+round his throat. Was it _gone_? How could she be sleeping that way with
+her hand in his--his face so close to her--if there remained any of that
+life-longing that had been there for Darrett to find?
+
+Life grew too cold, too gray and misshapen in that thought to see it as
+life. It could not be. It was only that she was exhausted. And her
+trust in him.
+
+At least there was that. Then he would make her care for him by caring
+for her--caring for her protectingly, tenderly, surrounding her with that
+sea of tenderness that was in his heart for her. Life would come back. He
+would woo it back. And no matter how the flame in his own heart might
+rage he would wait upon the day when he could bring the love light to
+her eyes without even the shadow of remembering of fear.
+
+So he yearned over her--sorrowing, hoping. And life was to him two
+things. What life had done to Ann. What life would be with Ann. He wanted
+to let himself touch his lips lightly to her temple--so close to him. But
+he would not--fearing to wake the fear in her, vowing to wait till love
+could come through a trust that must cast fear forever from the heart.
+
+Passion melted to tenderness; the tenderness flooding him in thought of
+the love he would give her.
+
+That same night he had her taken to a hospital. It was the only way he
+could think of for caring for her, and she was far enough from well to
+permit it. He left her there, again asleep, and cared for. Then returned
+to his hotel and telephoned Katie. It was past daylight before sleep
+came to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Once again Katie was donning the dress which had the colors of the sea.
+She was wearing it this time, not because she must get the poor old thing
+worn out, but because she had been asked to wear it. "By Request" she was
+saying to herself, with a warm smile, as she shook out its folds.
+
+As Nora was fastening it for her she saw her own face in the mirror and
+tried to twist it about in some way. It seemed she would have to make
+some explanation to Nora for looking like that.
+
+It had been a day of golden October sunshine without, and within Katie's
+heart a day of such sunshine as all her years of sunshine had never
+brought. She had not felt like playing golf, or like reading about
+evolution; body and mind were filled with a gladness all their own and
+she had taken a long walk in and out among the wooded paths of her
+beautiful Island and had been filled with thoughts of many beautiful and
+wonderful things. Of the past she had thought, and of the future, and
+most of all of the living present: the night before, and that evening,
+when he was coming to see her again and would have things to tell her.
+
+He had wanted to tell them then--some of the things about himself which
+he said she must know and which he gave fair warning would hurt her,
+"Then not to-night," she had said.
+
+And now the happiness was too great, filled her too completely and
+radiantly for her to fear the pain of which she had been warned. She was
+fortified against all pain.
+
+Wayne's finding Ann seemed to throw the gate to happiness wide open to
+her, giving her, not only happiness, but the right to it. She smiled in
+thinking how, again, it was Ann who opened a door.
+
+If Ann had never come she would not--in this way which had made it all
+possible--have known her man who mended the boats. The experience with
+Ann was as a bridge upon which they met. It was because of Ann they could
+walk so far along that bridge.
+
+The adventure, and what had come to seem the tragedy of the adventure,
+was over. It turned her back to those first days of play--the pretending
+which had led to realizing, the fancies which had been paths to
+realities.
+
+They would not go on in just that way; some other way would shape itself;
+she and Wayne would talk of it, make some plan for Ann. She could plan it
+better after the letter she would have from Wayne the next day telling of
+finding Ann.
+
+It was a new adventure now. The great adventure. But it was because she
+had ventured at all that the great adventure was offered her.
+
+Her venturing had led her to the crowds. She was not forgetting the
+crowds. She would go back to them. It could not be otherwise. There was
+much she wanted to do, and so much she wanted to know. But she would go
+back to them happy, and because happy, wiser and stronger.
+
+In myriad ways life had beckoned to her, promised her, as with buoyant
+step and singing heart she walked sunny paths that golden October
+afternoon.
+
+Later she had stopped to see Mrs. Prescott, and she, as she so often did,
+talked of Katie's mother. Katie was glad to be talking of her mother,
+and, as they also did, of her father. It brought them very near, so close
+it was as if they could know of the beautiful happiness in their child's
+heart. They talked of things which had happened when Katie was a little
+girl, making herself as the little girl so real, visualizing her whole
+life, making real and dear those things in which her life had been lived.
+
+As she thought of it again that night, after she was dressed and was
+waiting, hurt did come in the thought of his feeling for the army. She
+must talk to him again about the army, make him see that thing in it
+which was dear to her.
+
+Though could she? She did not seem able to tell even herself just what
+there was in her feeling for the army.
+
+Instead of arguments, came pictures--pictures and sounds known from
+babyhood: Men in uniform--her father in uniform, upon his horse--dress
+parade--the flag--the band--from reveille to taps things familiar and
+dear swept before her.
+
+It would seem to be the picturesque in it which wove the spell; but would
+her throat have tightened, those tears be springing to her eyes at a
+thing no deeper than the picturesque? No, in what seemed that fantastic
+setting were things genuine and fine: simplicity, hospitality,
+friendship, comradeship, loyalty, courage in danger and good humor in
+petty annoyances.
+
+Those things--oh yes, together with things less admirable--she knew
+to be there.
+
+She got out her pictures of her father and mother; her father in
+uniform--that gentle little smile on her mother's face. She thought of
+what her mother had endured, of what hosts of army women had endured,
+going to outlandish spots of the earth, braving danger and doing without
+cooks! She was proud of them, proud to be of them.
+
+She lingered over her father's picture. A soldier. Perhaps he was of a
+vanishing order, but she hoped it would be long--very long--before the
+things to be read in his face vanished from the earth.
+
+Through memories of her father there many times sounded the notes of the
+bugle--now this call, now that, piercing, compelling, sounding as _motif_
+of his life, thing before which all other things must fall away. She
+seemed to hear now the notes of retreat--to see the motionless
+regiment--then the evening gun and the band playing the Star Spangled
+Banner and the flag--never touching the ground--coming down for the
+night. She answered it in the things it woke in her heart: those ideals
+of service, courage, fidelity which it had left her.
+
+She would talk to him--to Alan (absurd she should think it so
+timidly--so close in the big things--so strange in some of the little
+ones)--about her father and mother. To make them real to him would make
+him see the army differently. It hurt her to think of his seeing it as he
+did, hurt her because she knew how it would have hurt them. To them, it
+had been the whole of their lives. They had not questioned; they had
+served. They had given it all they had.
+
+And that other thing there was to tell her--? Was that, too, something
+that would have hurt them? She hoped not. It seemed she could bear the
+actual hurt to herself better than thought of the hurt it would have
+been to them.
+
+But when the bell rang and she heard his voice asking for her a tumult of
+happiness crowded all else out.
+
+She was shyly radiant as she came to him. As he looked at her, it seemed
+to pass belief.
+
+But when he dared, and was newly convinced, as, his arms about her he
+looked down into her kindling face, his own grew purposeful as well as
+happy, more resolute than radiant. "We will make a life together," he
+said, as if answering something that had been in his thoughts. "We will
+beat it all down."
+
+An hour went by and he had not told the story of his life, life itself
+too mysterious, too luring, too beautiful. Whenever they came near to
+it they seemed to hold back, as if they would remain as they were
+then. Instead, they told each other little things about themselves,
+absurd little things, drawing near to each other by all those tender
+little paths of suddenly remembered things. And they lingered so, as
+if loving it so.
+
+It was when Katie spoke of her brother that he was swept again into the
+larger seriousness. Looking into her tender face, his own grew grave.
+"You know, Katie--what I told you--what I must tell you--"
+
+"Oh yes," said Katie, "there was something, wasn't there?" But she put
+out her hand as if to show there was nothing that could matter. He took
+the hand and held it; but he did not grow less grave.
+
+"Katie," he asked, "how much do you really care for the army?"
+
+It startled her, stirring a vague fear in her happy heart.
+
+"Why--I don't know; more than I realize, I presume." She was silent, then
+asked: "Why?"
+
+He did not reply; his face had become sober.
+
+"You are thinking," she ventured, "that your feeling for it is going to
+be--hard for me?"
+
+He nodded; he was still holding her hand tightly, as if to make sure of
+keeping it.
+
+"You see, Katie," he went on, with difficulty, "I have reason for
+that feeling."
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked sharply.
+
+"I have tried not to show you that I knew anything--in a personal
+way--about the army."
+
+Her breath was coming quickly; her face was strained. But after a moment
+she exclaimed: "Why--to be sure--you were in the Spanish War!"
+
+"No," said he with a hard laugh, "I am nothing so glorious as a
+veteran."
+
+He felt the hand in his grow cold. She drew it away and rose; turned away
+and was picking the leaves from a plant.
+
+But she found another thing to reach out to. "Well I suppose"--this she
+ventured tremulously, imploringly--"you went to West Point--and were--
+didn't finish?"
+
+"No, Katie," he said, "I never went to West Point."
+
+"Well then what did you do?" she demanded sharply.
+
+He laughed harshly. "Oh I was just one of those fools roped in by a
+recruiting officer in a gallant-looking white suit!"
+
+"You were--?" she faltered.
+
+"In the ranks. One of the men." The fact that she should be looking like
+that drove him to add bitterly: "Like Watts, you know."
+
+She stood there in silence, held. The radiance had all fallen from her.
+She was looking at him with something of the woe and reproach of a child
+for a cherished thing hurt.
+
+"Why, Katie," he cried, "_does_ it matter so? I thought it was only when
+we were _in_ that we were so--impossible."
+
+But she did not take the hands he stretched out. She was held.
+
+It drove him desperate. "Well if _that's_ so--if to have been in the army
+at all is a thing to make you look like _that_--Heaven knows," he threw
+in, "I don't blame you for despising us for fools!--But I don't know what
+you'll say when I tell you--"
+
+"When you tell me--what?" she whispered.
+
+"That I have no honorable discharge to lay at your feet. That I left your
+precious army through the noble gates of a military prison!"
+
+She took a step backward, swaying. The anguish which mingled with
+the horror in her face made him cry: "Katie, let me tell you! Let me
+show you--"
+
+But Katie, white-faced, was standing erect, braced for facing it. "What
+for? What did you do?"
+
+Her voice was quick, sharp; tenseness made her seem arrogant. It roused
+something ugly in him. "I knocked down a cur of a lieutenant," he said,
+and laughed defiantly.
+
+"You _struck_--an officer?"
+
+"I knocked down a man who ought to have been knocked down!"
+
+"_Struck_--your superior officer?"
+
+"Katie," he cried, "that's your way of looking at it! But let me tell
+you--let me show you--"
+
+But she had turned from him, covered her face; and before Katie there
+swept again those pictures, sounds: her father's voice ringing out over
+parade ground--silent, motionless regiment; the notes of retreat--those
+bugle notes, piercing, compelling, thing before which all other things
+must fall away--evening gun and lowered flag--
+
+She lifted colorless face, shaking her head.
+
+"_Katie_!" he cried. "Our life--_our_ love--_our_ life--"
+
+She raised her hand for silence, still shaking her head.
+
+"Won't you--_fight_ for it?" he whispered. "_Try_?"
+
+She kept shaking her head. "Anything else," she managed to articulate.
+"Anything else. Not this. You don't understand. Can't. Never would."
+Suddenly she cried: "Oh--_go away!_"
+
+For a moment he stood there. But her face was locked against appeal.
+Colorless, unsteady, he turned and left her.
+
+Katie put out her hand. Her father--her father in uniform, it had been so
+real, it seemed he must be there. But he was not there. Nothing was
+there. Nothing at all. As the front door closed she started forward, but
+there sounded for her again the notes of the bugle--piercing, compelling,
+thing before which all other things must fall away. "Taps," this time, as
+blown over her father's grave, soldiers' heads bowed and tears falling
+for a fine soldier who would respond to bugle calls no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Paris was in one of her gray moods that January afternoon. Everything was
+gray except the humanity. Emotion never seemed to grow gray in Paris.
+From her place by the window in Clara's apartment Katie was looking down
+into the narrow street, the people passing to and fro. Two men were
+shaking hands. They would stop, then begin again. They had been doing
+that for the last five minutes. They seemed to find life a very live
+thing. So did the _femme de menage_ and her soldier, who also had been
+standing over there for the last five minutes. Katie did not want to look
+longer at the _femme de menage_ and her soldier, so she turned her chair
+a little about and looked more directly at Clara.
+
+Clara was in gray mood, too. Only Clara differed from the streets in that
+it was the emotion was gray; the _robe de chambre_ was red.
+
+So were Clara's eyes. "It's not pleasant, Katie," she was saying, "having
+to remain here in Paris for these foggy months--with all one's friends
+down on the Riviera."
+
+"No," said Katie grimly, "life's hard."
+
+Clara's tears flowed afresh. "I've often thought _you_ were hard, Katie.
+It's because you've never--_cared._ You've never--suffered."
+
+Katie smiled slightly, again looking out the window at the _femme_ and
+her soldier, who were as contented with the seclusion offered by a
+lamp-post as though it were seclusion indeed. As she watched them, "hard"
+did not seem the precise word for something in Katie's eyes.
+
+"You see, Katie," Clara had resumed, as if her woe gave her the right to
+rebuke Katie for the lack of woe, "you've always had everything just the
+way you wanted it."
+
+"Just exactly," said Katie, still looking at the _femme de menage._
+
+"Your grandfather left you all that money, and when you want to do a
+thing all you have to do is do it. What can you know of the real sorrows
+and hardships of life?"
+
+"What indeed?" responded Katie briskly.
+
+"And your heart has never been touched--and I don't believe it ever will
+be," Clara continued spitefully--Katie seemed so complacent. "You have no
+real feeling. You're just like Wayne."
+
+Katie laughed at that and looked at Clara; then laughed again, and
+Clara flushed.
+
+"Speaking of Wayne," said Katie in off-hand fashion, "he's been
+made a major."
+
+She watched Clara as she said it. There were things Katie could be rather
+brutal about.
+
+"I'm sure that's very nice," said the woman who had divorced Wayne.
+
+"Yes, isn't it? And other things are going swimmingly. One of those
+things he used to be always puttering over--you may remember, Clara,
+mentioning, from time to time, those things he used to be puttering
+around with--has been adopted with a whoop. A great fuss is being made
+over it. It looks as though Wayne was confronted with something that
+might be called a future."
+
+"I'm sure I'm very glad," said Clara, "that somebody is to have something
+that might be called a future. Certainly a woman with barely enough to
+live on isn't in much danger of being confronted with one."
+
+Katie made no apology to herself for the pleasure she took in "rubbing it
+in." She remembered too many things too vividly.
+
+"It's pretty hard," said Clara, "when one has a--duty to society, and
+nothing to go on."
+
+Katie was thinking that society must be a very vigorous thing, persisting
+through all the "duties" people had to it.
+
+She smiled now in seeing that the thing which had brought her to Clara
+that day was in the nature of a "duty to society" and that in her case,
+too, a duty to society and a personal inclination moved happily together.
+
+Katie was there that afternoon to buy Worth.
+
+So she put it to herself in what Clara would have called her
+characteristically brutal fashion.
+
+She was sure Worth could be had for a price. She had that price and she
+believed the psychological moment was at hand for offering it.
+
+The reason for its being the psychological moment was that Clara wanted
+to join a party at Nice and did not have money enough to buy the
+clothes which would make her going worth while. For there was a man
+there--an American, a rich westerner--whom Clara's duty to society moved
+her to marry.
+
+That was Katie's indelicate deduction from Clara's delicate hints.
+
+And Katie wanted Worth. It wasn't wholly a matter of either affection or
+convenience. It had to do, and in almost passionate sense, with something
+which was at least in the category with such things as duties to society.
+Worth seemed to her too fine, too real, to be reared by a "truly feminine
+woman," as Clara had been known to call herself. Clara's great idea for
+Worth was that he be well brought up. That was Clara's idea of her duty
+to society. And it was Katie's notion of her duty to society to save him
+from being too well brought up.
+
+The things she had been seeing, and suffering, in the past year made her
+feel almost savagely on the subject.
+
+Katie had been there since October. Clara had magnanimously permitted
+Worth to remain with his Aunt Kate most of the time, with the provision
+that Katie bring him to her as often as she wanted him. This was
+unselfish of Clara, and cheaper.
+
+Clara's alimony was not small, but neither were her tastes. Indeed the
+latter rose to the proportions of duties to society.
+
+Katie knew it was as such she must treat them in the next half hour. She
+must save the "maternal instinct" Clara was always talking about--usually
+adding that it was a thing which Katie, of course, could not
+understand--by taking it under the sheltering wing of the "child's good."
+
+Katie knew just how to reach the emotions which Clara had, without
+outraging too much the emotions she persuaded herself she had.
+
+So she began speaking in a large way of life, how hard it was, how
+complicated. How they all loved Worth and wished to do the best thing for
+him, how she feared it must hurt the child's personality, living in that
+unsettled fashion, now under one influence, now under another. She spoke
+of Clara's own future, how she had _that_ to think of and how it was hard
+she be so--restricted. She drew a vivid picture of what life might be if
+Clara didn't "provide for the future"--she was careful to use no phrase
+so raw to truly feminine ears as "make a good marriage." And then, rather
+curtly when it came to it, tired of the ingratiating preamble, she asked
+Clara what she would think of relinquishing all claim on Worth and taking
+twenty thousand dollars.
+
+Clara tried to look more insulted by the proposition than invited by the
+sum. But Katie got a glimmer of that look of greed known to her of old.
+
+She went on talking. She was sure every one would think it beautiful of
+Clara to let Worth go to them just because they had a better way of
+caring for him, just because it was for the child's good. Every one would
+know how it must hurt her and admire her for the sacrifice. And then
+Katie mentioned the fact that the matter could be closed immediately and
+Clara start at once for Nice and perhaps that itself would "mean
+something to the future."
+
+From behind Clara's handkerchief--Clara's tears were in close relation to
+Clara's sense of the fitness of things--Katie made out that life seemed
+driving her to this, but that it hurt her to think so tragic a thing
+should be associated with so paltry a sum.
+
+"It's my limit," said Katie shortly. "Take it or leave it."
+
+Amid more sobs Katie got that all the Jones family were heartless, that
+life was cruel, but that she was willing to make any sacrifice for her
+child's good.
+
+"Then I'll go down and get him," said Katie, rising.
+
+Clara's sobs ceased instantly. "Get who?"
+
+"My lawyer. I left him down there talking to the _concierge_."
+
+"Katie Jones--how _could_ you!"
+
+"Oh she looks like a decent enough woman," said Katie. "I don't think it
+will hurt him any."
+
+"Katie, you have grown absolutely--_vulgar_. And so _hard_. You have no
+fineness--no intuition--nothing feminine about you. And how dared you
+bring your lawyer here to me? What right had you to assume I'd do this?"
+
+"Why I knew you well enough, Clara, to believe you would be willing to do
+it--for your child's good."
+
+Clara looked at her suspiciously and Katie hastened to add that she
+brought him because she wanted to pay ten thousand francs on account and
+she thought Clara might want to get the disagreeable business all
+settled up at once so she could hurry on to Nice before those friends of
+hers got over to Algiers, or some place where Clara might not be able to
+go after them.
+
+Clara again looked suspicious, but only said it was inconsiderate of
+Katie to expect her to receive a lawyer with her poor eyes in that
+condition.
+
+But when Katie returned with him Clara's eyes were a softer red and she
+managed to extract from the interview the pleasure of showing him that
+she was suffering.
+
+As she watched the transaction, Katie felt a little ashamed of herself.
+Not because she was doing it, but because she had known so well how to do
+it. But with a grimace she banished her compunctions in the thought of
+its being for the child's good, and hence a duty to society.
+
+Less easy to banish was the hideous thought that she might have been able
+to get him for less!
+
+By the time the attorney had gone Clara seemed to be looking upon herself
+as one hallowed by grief; she was in the high mood of one set apart by
+suffering. In her eyes was something which she evidently felt to be a
+look of resignation. In her hand something which she certainly felt to be
+an order for ten thousand francs.
+
+The combination first amused and then irritated Katie. It was
+exasperating to have Clara giving herself airs about the grief which was
+to make such a sorry cut in Katie's income.
+
+Clara, in her mellowed mood, spoke of the past, why it had all been as
+it had. She was even so purged by suffering as to speak gently of Wayne.
+"I hope, Katie--yes, actually hope--that Wayne will some time find it
+possible to care, and be happy."
+
+And when Katie thought of how much Wayne had cared, why he had not been
+happy, it grew more and more difficult to treat Clara as one sanctified
+by sorrow.
+
+It gave her a fierce new longing for the real, the real at all costs, a
+contempt for all that artifice and self-delusion which made for the
+things at war with the real.
+
+She had enough malice to entertain an impulse to strip Clara of her
+complacency, take away from her her pleasant cup of sorrow, make her take
+one good look at herself for the woman she was rather than the woman she
+was flaunting. But she had no zest for it. What would be the use? And,
+after all, self-deception seemed a thing one was entitled to practice, if
+one wished.
+
+What Katie wanted most was to get out into the air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+To get out into the air was the thing she was always wanting in those
+days, or at least for the last two months it had been so. At first she
+had been too wretched to be conscious of needing anything.
+
+But Katie was not built for wretchedness; everything in her was fighting
+now for air, what air meant to spirit and body.
+
+It was in the sense of the spirit that she most of all wanted to get out
+into the air, out into a more spacious country than the world Clara
+suggested, out where the air was clear and keen and where there were
+distances more vast than those which would shut her in.
+
+For she had looked into a larger country. Allegiance to the smaller one
+could not be whole-hearted.
+
+She wondered if it were true she was getting hard. Something in her did
+seem hardening. At any rate, something in her was wanting to fight, fight
+for air, fight, no matter who must be hurt in the struggle, for that
+bigger country into which she had looked, those greater distances, more
+spacious sweeps. Sometimes she had a sense of being in a close room, and
+nothing in the world was so dreadful to Katie as a close room, and felt
+that she had but to open a door and find herself out where the wind would
+blow upon her face. And the door was not bolted. It was hers to open, if
+she would. There were no real chains. There were only dead hands, hands
+which live hands had power to brush away. And the room was made close by
+all those things which they of the dead hands had loved, things which
+they had served, things which, for them, had been out in the open, not
+making the air unbearable in a close room. And when she wanted to tell
+them that she must get out of the room because it was too close for her,
+that she could no longer stay with things which shut out the air, it
+seemed they could not understand--for they were dead, but they could look
+at her with love and trust, those hands, which could have been so easily
+brushed away, as bolts on the door of the room holding the things they
+had left for her to guard.
+
+And they were proud, and their trusting eyes seemed to say they knew she
+would not make all their world sorry for them.
+
+She walked slowly across Pont du Carrousel, watching the people, the
+people going their many ways, meeting their many problems, wondering if
+many of them had well loved hands, either of life or death, as bolts upon
+the doors which held them from more spacious countries, holding them so
+securely because they could be so easily brushed away. It was people,
+people of the crowds, who saved her from a sense of isolation her own
+friends brought: for she was always certain that in the crowds was some
+one else who was wondering, longing, perhaps a courageous some one who
+was fighting.
+
+Paris itself had fought, was fighting all the time. She loved it anew in
+the new sense of its hurts and its hopes. And always it had laughed. She
+felt kinship to it in that. Seeming so little caring, yet so deeply
+understanding. The laughter-loving city had paid stern price that its
+children might laugh. It seemed to her sometimes that one could love and
+hate Paris for every known reason, but in the end always love for the
+full measure it gave. She stood for a moment looking at the spire of
+Sainte Chapelle, slender as a fancy, yet standing out like a conviction;
+watching the people on the busses, the gesticulating crowds--blockades of
+emotion, the men on the Quai rummaging among the book-stalls for possible
+treasures left by men who had loved it long before, looking at the thanks
+in stone for yesterday's vision of to-morrow, and everywhere cabs--as
+words carrying ideas--breathlessly bearing eager people from one vivid
+point to another in the hurrying, highly-pitched, articulate city.
+
+It interested her for a time, as things that were live always interested
+Katie. The city's streets had always been for her as waves which bore her
+joyously along. But after a time, perhaps just because she was so live,
+it made her unbearably lonely.
+
+The things they might do together in Paris! The things to see--to
+talk about.
+
+And still filled with her revolt against Clara's self-delusions, she
+asked of herself how much the demand of her spirit to soar was prompted
+by the hunger of her heart to love.
+
+She could not say. She wondered how many of the world's people would be
+able to say. How many of the spacious countries would have been gained
+had men been fighting only for their philosophies, pushed only by the
+beating of wings that would soar. But did that make the distances less
+vast? Less to be desired? Though visioning be child of desiring--was the
+vision less splendid, and was not the desire ennobled?
+
+Her speculations were of such nature as to make her hurry home to see
+whether there was American mail.
+
+A certain letter which sometimes came to her was called "American mail."
+All the rest of the American mail which reached Paris was privileged to
+be classed with that letter.
+
+Katie had come over in October with her Aunt Elizabeth, who felt the need
+of recuperation from the bitter blow of her son's marriage. Katie, too,
+felt the need of recuperation--she did not say from what, but from
+something that made her intolerant of her aunt's form of distress. Her
+aunt said that Katie was changing: growing unsympathetic, hard,
+unfeminine. She thought it was because she did not marry. It would soften
+her to care for some one, was the theory of her Aunt Elizabeth.
+
+She had remained in order to be with Worth; and, too, because there
+seemed nothing to go back to. Mrs. Prescott had come over to be for a
+time with a niece who was studying music, and she and Katie were
+together. Now the older woman was beginning to talk of wanting to go
+back; she was getting letters from Harry which made her want to see him.
+The letters sounded as though he were in love again.
+
+And Katie was getting letters herself, letters to make her want to see
+the writer thereof. They, too, sounded as if written by one in love. With
+things as regards Worth adjusted, Katie would be free to go with her
+friend, and she was homesick. At least that was the non-committal name
+she gave to something that was tugging at her heart.
+
+But--go home to what? For what?
+
+Her vision had not grown any clearer. It was only that the "homesickness"
+was growing more acute.
+
+And that night's mail did not fill her with a yearning to become an
+expatriate.
+
+In addition to the "American mail" there was a letter from Ann. That
+evening after Worth was asleep and Mrs. Prescott had gone to her room,
+Katie reread both letters, and a number of others, and thought about a
+number of things.
+
+Wayne had undertaken the supervision of Ann. In his first letter, that
+unsatisfactory letter in which he gave so few details about finding Ann,
+he had said quite high-handedly that he was going to look after things
+himself. "I think, Katie," he wrote, "that with the best of intentions,
+your method was at fault. I can see how it all came about, but it is not
+the way to go on. It was too unreal. The time of make-believe is over.
+Ann is a real person and should work out her life in a real way, her own
+way, not following your fancyings. She must be helped until she gets
+stronger and more prepared. You've had the thing come too tragically to
+you to see it just right, so I'm going to step in and I want you to leave
+things to me."
+
+So Wayne had "stepped in" and was lending Ann the money to study
+stenography. Katie had made a wry face over stenography, which did not
+have a dream-like or an Ann-like sound--but a very Wayne-like one!--but
+had entered no protest; at that time she had been too dumbly miserable to
+enter protest about anything.
+
+Wayne seemed to her curt and rather unfeeling about the whole thing,
+insisting, somewhat indelicately, she thought, on the point that Ann be
+prepared to earn her own living and that there be no more nonsense about
+her. She hoped he was kinder with Ann than he sounded in his letters
+about her.
+
+Ann was in New York. Wayne had said, and Katie agreed with him, that
+Chicago was not the place for her to start in anew. She had gone through
+too many hard things there. And Katie was glad for other reasons. With
+Wayne in Washington, she would have no more occasion to be in the
+middle-west and Ann would be too far away in Chicago.
+
+But Katie was looking desperately homesick at that thought of having no
+more occasion to be in the middle-west.
+
+The man who mended the boats was still out there, mending boats and
+finishing his play, which she knew now was to be about the army. One
+reason he had wanted to mend boats there was that he might know some of
+the men who worked in the shops at the Arsenal, interested in that
+relation of labor to militarism.
+
+For two months Katie had heard nothing from him. In those first months
+he, too, seemed helpless before it, seemed to understand that Katie's
+feeling was a thing he could not hope to understand--much less, change.
+
+Then there rose in him the impulse to fight, for her, against it all,
+stir her to fight.
+
+"Katie," he wrote in that first letter, letter she was re-reading that
+night, "we have seen two sides of the same thing. Our two visions,
+experiences, have roused in us two very different emotions. Does that
+mean it must kill for us what we have said is the biggest
+emotion--experience--the greatest joy and brightest hope life has
+brought us?
+
+"We're both bound by it. I by the hurt it's brought me, you by the
+happiness; I by the hate it roused, you by the love that lingers round
+it. Are we going to make no efforts to set ourselves free? Are we so much
+of the past that the institutions of the past and the experiences and
+prejudices of those institutions can shut us out from the future and from
+each other?
+
+"Katie, you have the rich gift of the open mind. I don't believe that,
+lastingly, there's anything you'll shut out as impossible to consider.
+Your eyes say it, Katie--say they'll look at everything, and just as
+fairly as they can. Oh they're such honest, fearless, just eyes--so wise
+and so tender. And it was I--I who love them so--brought that awful look
+of hurt to those wonderful eyes. Katie--I want to spend all of my life
+keeping that hurt look from those dear eyes!
+
+"You're asked to do a hard thing, dear Katie. It's cruel it should be
+_you_ so hard a thing is asked of. Asked to look at a thing you see
+through the feeling of a lifetime as though seeing it for the first time.
+To look at all you've got to push aside things you regarded as fixed. I
+suppose every one has something that to him seems the things unshakable,
+something he finds it terrifying to think of moving. All your traditions,
+all your love and loyalty cling round this thing which it seems to you
+you can't have touched. But Katie, as you read these pages won't you try
+to think of things, not as you've been told they were, but just as they
+seem to you from what you read? Think of them, not in the old grooves,
+but just as it comes in to you as the story of a life?
+
+"You'll try to do that for me, won't you, dear fair-minded,
+loving-spirited Katie?
+
+"I was a country boy; lived on a farm, got lonesome, thought about things
+I had nobody to talk to about, read things and wanted more things to
+read, part the dreamer and part the great husky fellow wanting life,
+adventure, wanting to see things and know things--most of all, experience
+things. I want to tell you a lot about it sometime. I can't let go the
+idea that there is going to be a sometime. Just because there's so much
+to tell, if nothing else. And, Katie, _isn't_ there something else?
+
+"No way to begin the story of one's life!
+
+"Then I went away from home. To see the world. Try my fortune.
+Experience. Adventure. That was the call.
+
+"And the very first thing I fell in with that recruiting officer in the
+white suit. I can see just how that fellow looked. Get every intonation
+as he drew the glowing picture of life in the army.
+
+"The army sounded good. The army was experience, adventure, with a
+vengeance. A life among men. A chance. He told me that an intelligent
+fellow like me would soon be an officer. Of course I agreed perfectly I
+was an intelligent fellow, impressed with army intelligence in picking me
+for one. Why I could see myself as commander-in-chief in no time!
+
+"There's the cruelty of it, Katie. The expectation they rouse to get
+you--the contemptuous treatment after they've got you. The difference
+between the army of the 'Men Wanted For the Army' posters and the army
+those men find after those posters have done their work.
+
+"Remember your telling me about visiting at Fort Riley when you were
+quite a youngster? The good time you had?--how gay it was? How charming
+your host was? As nearly as I can figure it out, I was there at the same
+time, filling the noble office of garbage man. Now, far be it from me,
+believing in the dignity of all labor, to despise the office of garbage
+man. I can think of conditions under which I would be quite happy to
+serve my country in that capacity. But having enlisted because of the
+noble figure of a soldier carrying a flag, I grew pretty sore at the
+'Damn you, we've got you' manner in which I was ordered to carry
+things--well, not to be too indelicate let us merely say things less
+attractive than the flag.
+
+"It's not having to peel potatoes and wash dishes; it's seeming to be
+despised for doing it that stirs in men's hearts the awful soreness that
+makes them deserters.
+
+"In our regiment men were leaving right along. Our company had a
+particularly bad record on desertions. Our captain, a decent fellow, was
+away most of the time and the lieutenant in command was a cur. I'd find a
+more gentle word for him if I could, but I know none such. Army men talk
+a great deal about discipline. But there's a difference between
+discipline and bullying. This fellow couldn't issue an order without
+making you feel that difference.
+
+"He had a laugh that was a sneer. It wasn't a laugh, just a smile; a
+smile that sneered. He couldn't pass a crowd of men cutting grass without
+making their hearts sore.
+
+"I don't say he's the typical army man. I don't doubt that there are men
+high in the army who, if all were known, would despise him as much as the
+men in his company did. But I do say that if there were not a good many a
+good deal like him more than fifty thousand young men of America would
+not have deserted from the United States army in the past twelve years.
+
+"There was a fellow in our company I had been particularly sorry for. He
+wasn't a bad sort at all; he was more dazed than anything else; didn't
+understand the army manner; the army snobbishness. This lieutenant
+couldn't look at him without making him sullen.
+
+"One day he told him to do a loathsome thing, then stood there with that
+sneering smile watching him do it. Well, he did it, all right; that's
+what _gets_ you, that powerlessness under what you know for injustice.
+But that night he left.
+
+"I knew he was going. He wanted me to go with him. I don't know why I
+didn't. I don't blame men for deserting. But for my own part, it would
+only be two years more; I used to say to myself, 'You got into this.
+You'll see it through.'
+
+"They caught him, brought him back the next day. I happened to be there
+at the time. So did our spick and span lieutenant. The man who had been
+caught--or boy, rather, for he was but that--was anything but spick and
+span. His clothes were torn and muddy, his face dirty and bloody--it had
+been scratched by something. He knew what he was in for. Court martial
+and imprisonment for desertion. We knew what _that_ meant.
+
+"He was a sorry, unsoldierly sight. Gone to pieces. Unnerved. All in. His
+chin was quivering. And then the little lieutenant came along, starting
+out for golf. He stood in front of him and looked him up and down--this
+boy who had been caught. Boy who would be imprisoned. And as he looked at
+him he laughed; or smiled rather, that smile that was a sneer.
+
+"He stood there continuing to smile--torturing him with that smile he
+couldn't do a thing about--this boy who was down; this fellow who was all
+in. That was when I struck him in the face and knocked him down.
+
+"The penalty for that, as I presume I need not tell an army girl, is
+death. 'Or such other punishment as a court martial may direct.'
+
+"The thing directed in my case was imprisonment at Fort Leavenworth for
+five years. Most of the men in that prison would say, 'Give me death.'
+
+"I'd better not say much about it. Something gets hot in my head when I
+begin to talk about it. If you were with me--your cooling hand, your
+steadying eyes--I could tell you about it. 'If you were with me'! I find
+that a very arresting phrase, Katie.
+
+"Those were black years. Cruel years. Years to twist a man's soul. They
+took something from me that will not be mine again. I remember your
+telling how Ann said there were things to make perfect happiness forever
+impossible. She was right. There _are_ hours that stay.
+
+"I went into the army just an adventurous boy. I came from it an
+embittered man. My experience with it made me suspect all of life. I
+was more than unhappy. I was sullen. I _hated_--and I wanted to get
+even. Oh it was a lovely spirit in which I went forth a second time to
+meet the world.
+
+"I don't know what might not have happened, I think I was right in line
+to become a criminal, like so many of the rest of them who have served
+time at Leavenworth--I don't suppose the United States has any finer
+school anywhere than its academy for criminals at Fort Leavenworth--had
+it not been for a man I met.
+
+"I got a job in a garage. I had always been pretty good at mechanical
+things and knew a little about it. And there I met this man--and through
+him came salvation.
+
+"I don't know, Katie, maybe socialism will not save the world. I don't
+see how it can miss it--but be that as it may, I know it has saved many a
+man's soul. I know it saved mine.
+
+"This fellow--an older man with whom I worked--talked to me. He saw the
+state I was in, won my confidence and got my story. And then he began
+talking to me and gave me books. He got me to come to his house instead
+of the places I was going to, saying nothing against the other places,
+but just making his things so much more attractive. We used to talk and
+argue and gradually other things fell away just because there was no
+room for them.
+
+"You know I had loved books--read all I could get--but didn't seem to get
+the right ones. Well, after I had served time breaking clay I didn't care
+anything about books--too sore, too dogged, too full of hate. But the
+love for the books came back, and through the books, and through this
+friend, came the splendid saving vision.
+
+"Vision of what the world might be--world with the army left out, with
+all that the army represented to me vanished from the earth. With men
+not ruling and cursing other men; but working together--the world for
+all and all for the world. And the thing that saved me was that I saw
+there was something to work for--something to believe in--look
+at--think about--when old memories of the guard knocking me down with
+the butt of his gun would tear into my soul and bring me low with the
+hate they roused.
+
+"And so I began again, Katie dear, that sense of things as they might
+be--that vision--taking some of the sting from what I had suffered from
+things as they were. I stopped hating and cursing; I began thinking and
+dreaming. There came the desire to _know_. I tore into books like a
+madman. I couldn't go on hating my fellow-men because I was too busy
+trying to find out about them. And so it happened that there were things
+more interesting to think about than the things I had suffered in the
+army; I was carried out of myself--and saved.
+
+"I wish I could talk to some of those other fellows! Some of those boys
+who ran away from the army, not because they were criminals and cowards,
+but just because they didn't know what to make of things. I wish I could
+talk to some of those men who dug clay with me at Fort Leavenworth--men
+who went away cursing the government, loathing the flag, hating all men,
+and who have nothing to take them out of it. I wish I could take them up
+with me to the hill-top and say--'There! Don't look at the little pit
+down below! Look out! Look wide!'
+
+"Katie--you aren't going to save men by putting them at back-breaking
+work under brutalized guards. You aren't going to redeem men by
+belittling them. You're going to save them by making them _see_. And the
+crime of our whole system of punishments is that it does all in its
+power, not to make them see, but to shut them out from seeing...."
+
+In the letters which followed he told her other things, things he had
+done, the work he hoped to do, what he wanted to do with his life. Told
+it with the simplicity of sincerity, the fine seriousness untainted with
+the self-consciousness called modesty.
+
+He believed he could work with men; things he had already done made him
+believe he could do more, bigger things. He wanted to help fight the
+battles of the people who worked; not with any soldier of fortune notion,
+but because he was one of those people, because he had suffered as one of
+those people, and believed he saw their way more clearly than the mass of
+them were seeing it.
+
+And he wanted to write about men; had some reason for believing he could.
+He was hoping that his play would open the way to many other things; it
+looked as though it were going to be put on.
+
+He told of his feeling for it. "More than a showing up and a getting
+even, though there _is_ that. It will be no prancing steed and clanking
+saber picture of the army. More digging of clay than waving of the flag.
+I see significant things arising from that survival of autocracy in a
+democracy, an interesting study in the bitter things coming out of the
+relation of the forms and habits of a vanishing order to the aspirations
+and tendencies of a forming one. And in that bending of spirit to form,
+the army codes and standards making for the army habit of mind, the army
+snobbishness and narrowness. The things that shape men, until a given
+body of men have particular characteristics, particular limitations. You
+said that if you loved them for nothing else you would love army people
+for their hospitality. But in the higher sense of that beautiful word
+they are the least hospitable of people. Their latch string of the spirit
+is not out. Their minds are tight--fixed. They have not that openness of
+spirit and flexibility of mind that make for wider visioning.
+
+"And it's not that they haven't, but why they haven't, brings one
+to the vein.
+
+"Yes, I got the article you sent me, written by your army friend,
+eloquent over the splendid things war has done for the human race, the
+great things it has bred in us. Well if the 'war virtues' aren't killed
+by an armed peace, then I don't think we need worry much about ever
+losing them. It's the people at war for peace who are going to conserve
+and utilize for the future the strong and shining things which days of
+war have left us. Men who must base their great claim on what has been
+done in the past are not the men to shape the future--or even carry the
+heritage across the bridge. War is now a faithful servant of capitalism.
+Its glorious days are over. It's even a question whether it's longer
+valuable as a servant. It may lose its job before its master loses his.
+In any case, it goes with capitalism; and if the good old war virtues are
+to be saved out of the wreck it's the wreckers will save them!
+
+"Which is not what I started out to say. This play into which I'm
+seeking to get the heart of what I've lived and thought and dreamed is
+not the impersonal thing this harangue might make it sound. I trust it's
+nothing so bloodless as a study of economic forces or picture of the
+relationship of old things to new. It's that only as that touches a man's
+life, means something to that life. It's about the army because this man
+happens, for a time, to be in the army--it's what the army does to him
+that's the thing.
+
+"Though it seems to me a pretty dead thing in these days. Life itself is
+a dead thing with you gone from it."
+
+In the letter she received that night he wrote: "Katie, is it going to
+spoil it for us? Can it? _Need_ it? We who have come so close? Have so
+much? Are outlived things to push us apart? That seems _too_ bitter!
+
+"Oh don't think that I don't _see_. The things it would mean giving up.
+The wrench. And, for what?--your friends would say. At times I wonder how
+I _can_--ask it, hope for it. Then there lives for me again your
+wonderful face as it was when you lifted it to me that first time.
+_You_--and I grow bold again.
+
+"I don't say you wouldn't suffer. I don't say there wouldn't be hurts,
+big hurts brought by the little things arising from lives differently
+lived. I know there would be times of longing for things gone. For the
+sunny paths. For it couldn't be all sunny paths with me, Katie. Those
+years in the dark will always throw their shadow.
+
+"Then, how dare I? Loving you--laughing, splendid you--how can I?
+
+"Because I believe that you love me. Remembering that light in your eyes,
+knowing _you_, I dare believe that the hurts would be less than the hurt
+of being spared those hurts.
+
+"I can hear your friends denouncing me. Hear their withering arguments,
+and I'll own that at times they do wither. But, Katie, I just can't seem
+to _stay_ withered!
+
+"You're such an upsetting person, dear Katie. To both heart and
+philosophy. It's not possible to hate a world that Katie's in. World that
+didn't spoil Katie. And if there are many of the _you_--oh no other real
+you!--but many who, awakened, can fight as you can fight and love as you
+can love--wouldn't it be a joke on us revolutionists if we were cheated
+out of our revolution just by the love in the hearts of the Katies?
+
+"Well, nobody would be so happy in that joke as would the defrauded
+revolutionists!
+
+"You make me wonder, Katie, if perhaps it isn't less the vision than the
+visioning. Less the thing seen than that thing of striving to see. Make
+me feel the narrowness in scorning the trying to see just because not
+agreeing with the thing seen. Sometimes I have a new vision of the world.
+Vision of a world visioning. Of the vision counting less than the
+visioning.
+
+"Those moments of glow bear me to you. Persuade me that our visions must
+be visioned together.
+
+"Life's all empty without you. The radiance is not there. In these days
+light comes only through dreams, and so I dream dreams and see visions.
+
+"Dreams of _us_--visions of the years we'd meet together. And you are
+not bowed and broken in those visions, Katie. You're very strong and
+buoyant--and always eager for life--and always tender. No, not
+_always_ tender. Sometimes fighting! Telling me I don't know what I'm
+talking about. It's a splendid picture of Katie fighting--eyes
+shining, cheeks red.
+
+"And then at the very height of her scorn, Katie happens to think of
+something funny. And she says the something funny in her inimitable
+way. Then she laughs, and after her laugh she's tender again, and says
+she loves me, though still maintaining I didn't know what I was
+talking about!
+
+"And in the visions there are times when Katie is very quiet. So still.
+Hushed by the wonder of love. Then Katie's laughing eyes are deep with
+mystery, Katie's face seems melted to pure love, and from it shines the
+light that makes life noble.
+
+"In these days of a fathomless loneliness I dare not look long upon
+that vision.
+
+"Do you ever hear a call, dear heart? A call to a freer country than
+any country you have known? Call to a country where the things which
+bind you could bind no more? And if in fancy you sometimes let
+yourself drift into that other country, am I with you there? Do you
+ever have a picture of our venturing together into the unknown
+ways--daring--suffering--rejoicing--_growing_? Sometimes sunshine and
+sometimes storm--but always open country and everwidening sky-line. Oh
+Katie--how splendid it might be!"
+
+She read and re-read it, dreaming and picturing. And at length there
+settled upon her that stillness, that pause before life's wonder and
+mystery. Her eyes were deep. The light that makes life noble glorified
+her tender face.
+
+She broke from it at last to look for a card they had there giving dates
+of sailings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+They would get in late that afternoon. Off on the horizon was a hazy mass
+which held the United States of America, as sometimes the haze of a dream
+may hold a mighty truth.
+
+Katie and Mrs. Prescott were having a brisk walk on deck. They paused and
+peered off at that mist out of which New York must soon shape itself.
+
+"Just off yonder's your country, Katie," the older woman was saying.
+"Soon you'll see the flag flying over Governor's Island. Will it make
+you thrill?"
+
+"It always has," replied Katie.
+
+Mrs. Prescott stole a keen look at her, seeing that she was not answered.
+They had had some strange talks on that homeward trip, talks to stir in
+the older woman's mind vague apprehensions for the daughter of her old
+friend. It did not seem to Mrs. Prescott what she called "best" that a
+woman--and particularly an unmarried one--should be doing as much
+thinking as Katie seemed to be doing. She wished Katie would not read
+such strange books; she was sure Walt Whitman, for one, could not be a
+good influence. What would happen to the world if the women of Katie's
+class were to--let down the bars, she vaguely and uneasily thought it.
+And she was too fond of Katie to want her to venture out of shelter.
+
+"Well it ought to, Katie dear. I don't know who has the right to
+thrill to it, if you haven't. Doesn't it make you think of those sturdy
+forefathers of yours who came to it long ago, when it was an unknown
+land, and braved dangers for it? Your people have always fought for it,
+Katie. There would be no country had not such lives as theirs been
+given to it."
+
+Katie was peering off at the faint outlines which one moment seemed
+discernible in the mist and the next seemed but a phantom of the
+imagination, as the truth which is to stand out bold and incontestable
+may at first suggest itself so faintly through the dream as to be
+called a phantom of the imagination. "True," she said. "And fine. And
+equally true and fine that there's just as much to fight for now as
+there ever was."
+
+"Oh yes," murmured Mrs. Prescott, "we must still have the army, of
+course."
+
+"The fighting's not in the army," said Katie, to herself rather than to
+her friend.
+
+The older woman sighed. "I'm afraid I don't understand you, Katie." After
+a pause she added, sadly: "Something seems happening in the world that is
+driving older people and younger people apart."
+
+Katie turned to her affectionately. "Oh, no."
+
+But more affectionately than convincingly. Mrs. Prescott looked at her
+wistfully: so strong, so buoyant, so fearless and so fine; she felt an
+impulse to keep her, though for what--from what--she would not have been
+able to say.
+
+"Katie dear," she said gently, "I get a glimpse of what you mean in
+there still being things to fight for. You mean new ideas; new things. I
+know you're stirred by something. I feel your enthusiasm; it shines from
+your face. Enthusiasm is a splendid thing in the young, Katie. In any of
+us. New things there always are to fight for, of course. But, dear
+Katie--the old things? Those beautiful _old_ things which the
+generations have left us? Things fought for, tested, mellowed by our
+fathers and mothers, and their fathers and mothers? Aren't they a little
+too precious, too hardly won, too freighted with memories to be lightly
+cast aside?"
+
+Katie looked at her friend's face, itself so incontestably the gift of
+the generations. It made vivid her own mother's face, and that her own
+struggle. "I don't think," she said tremulously, "that you are justified
+in saying they are 'lightly' cast aside."
+
+They were silent, looking off at the land which was breaking through the
+mists, responding in their different ways to the different things it was
+saying to them.
+
+"It seems to me," Mrs. Prescott began uncertainly, "that it is not for
+women--particularly women to whom they have come as directly as to you
+and me--to cast them off at all. We seem to be in strange days. Days of
+change. To me, Katie, it seems that the work for the women--_our_
+women--is in preserving those things, dear things left to us, holding
+them safe and unharmed through the destroying days of change."
+
+She had grown more sure of herself in speaking.
+
+The last came staunchly.
+
+"It seems," she added, "that it would be enough for us to do. And the
+thing for which we are best fitted."
+
+Katie was silent; she could not bear to say to her friend--her mother's
+friend--that it did not seem to her enough to do, or the thing for which
+she was best fitted.
+
+She was the less drawn to the idea because of a face she could see down
+in the steerage: face of an immigrant girl who was also turning eager
+face, not to the land for which her forefathers had fought, but to that
+which would be the land of her descendants.
+
+She had seen her there before, face set toward the land into which she
+was venturing. She had become interested in her. She seemed so eager. And
+thinking back to the things seen in her search for Ann, other things she
+had been reading of late, a fear for that girl--pity for her--more than
+that, sense of responsibility about her grew big in Katie.
+
+It made it seem that there was bigger and more tender work for women than
+preserving inviolate those things women had left. As she drew near the
+harbor of New York she was more interested in the United States of
+America as related to that girl than as associated with her own
+forefathers who had fought for it long before.
+
+And as it had been for them to fight in the new land, it seemed that it
+was for her, not merely to cherish the fact of their having fought, not
+holding that as something apart--something setting her apart, but to
+fight herself; not under the old standards because they had been their
+standards, but under whatsoever standards best served the fight. It even
+seemed that the one way to keep alive those things they had left her was
+to let them shape themselves in whatever form the new spirit--new
+demands--would shape them.
+
+Mrs. Prescott was troubled by her silence. "Katie dear," she said, "you
+come of a long line of fine and virtuous women. In these days when
+everything seems attacked--endangered--_that_, at least--that thing most
+dear to women--most indispensable--must be held inviolate. And by such as
+you. Wherever your ideas may carry you, don't let _that_ be touched.
+Remember that the safety of the world for women goes, if you do."
+
+It turned Katie to Ann. Safety _she_ had found. Then again she looked
+down at the immigrant girl--beautiful girl that she was. And wondered.
+And feared.
+
+She turned to Mrs. Prescott with a tear on her eyelashes and a smile a
+little hard about her lips. "Would you say that 'fine and virtuous women'
+have succeeded in keeping the world a perfectly safe place for women?"
+
+Mrs. Prescott was repelled, but Katie did not notice. She was looking
+with a passionate sternness off at New York. "Let _anything_ be touched,"
+she spoke it with deep feeling. "I say _nothing's_ too precious to be
+touched--if touching it can make things better!"
+
+Mrs. Prescott had gone below. Katie feared that she had wounded her, and
+was sorry. She had not been able to help it. The face of that immigrant
+girl was too tragically eager.
+
+They were almost in now, close to Governor's Island, over which the flag
+was flying. It gripped her as it had never done before.
+
+"Boy," she said to Worth, perched on a coil of rope beside her, "there's
+your country. Country your people came to a long time ago, and fought
+for, and some of them died for. And you'll grow up, Worth, and _you'll_
+fight for it. Not the way they fought; it won't need you to fight for it
+that way; _they_ did that--and now that's done. But there will be lots
+for you to fight for, too; harder fights to fight, I think, than any they
+fought. You'll fight to make it a better place for men and women and
+little children to live in. Not by firing guns at other men, Worth, but
+by being as wise and kind and as honest and fair as you know how to be."
+
+It was her voice moved him; it had been vibrant with real passion.
+
+But after a moment the face of the child of many soldiers clouded. "But
+won't I have _any_ gun 'tall, Aunt Kate?" he asked wistfully.
+
+She smiled at the stubborn persistence of militarism. "I'm afraid not,
+dear. I hope we're not going to have so many guns when you're a man. But,
+Worth, if you don't have the gun, other little boys will have more to
+eat. There are lots of little boys and girls in the world now haven't
+enough to eat just because there are so many guns. Wouldn't you rather
+do without the gun and know that nobody was going hungry?"
+
+"I--guess so," faltered Worth, striving to be magnanimous but
+looking wistful.
+
+"But, Aunt Kate," he pursued after another silence, "what's father making
+guns for--if there aren't going to be any?"
+
+Katie's smile was not one Worth would be likely to get much from. "Ask
+father," she said rather grimly. "I think he might find the question
+interesting."
+
+Worth continued solemn. "But, Aunt Kate--won't there be anybody
+'tall to kill?"
+
+"Why, honey," she laughed, "does it really seem to you such a gloomy
+world--world in which there will be nobody to kill? Don't worry, dear.
+The world's getting so interesting we're going to find lots of things
+more fun than guns."
+
+"Maybe," said Worth, "if I don't have a gun you'll get me an air-ship,
+Aunt Kate."
+
+"Maybe so," she laughed.
+
+"The man that mends the boats says I'll have an air-ship before I die,
+Aunt Kate."
+
+She gave Worth a sudden little squeeze, curiously jubilant at the
+possibility of his having an air-ship before he died. And she viewed the
+city of sky-scrapers adoringly--tenderly--mistily. "Oh Worthie," she
+whispered, "isn't it _lovely_ to be getting home?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+She found it difficult to adjust herself to the Ann who had luncheon
+with her the next day. The basis of their association had shifted and it
+had been too unique for it to be a simple matter to appear unconscious
+of the shifting.
+
+She had not seen Ann since the day they said the cruel things to each
+other. Wayne had thought it best that way, saying that Ann must have no
+more emotional excitement. She had acquiesced the more readily as at the
+time she was not courting emotional excitement for herself.
+
+And now the Ann sitting across the table from her was not the logical
+sequence of things experienced in last summer's search for Ann. She was
+not the sum of her thoughts about Ann--visioning through her, not the
+expression of the things Ann had opened up. It was hard, indeed, to think
+of her as in any sense related to them, at all suggestive of them.
+
+An Ann radiating life rather than sorrowing for it was an Ann she did not
+know just what to do with.
+
+And there was something disturbing in that rich glow of happiness. She
+did not believe that Ann's something somewhere could be stenography. Yet
+her radiance--the deep, warm quality of it--suggested nothing so much as
+a something somewhere attained. It seemed to Katie rather remarkable if
+the prospect of soon being able to earn her own living could make a
+girl's eyes as wonderful as that.
+
+There was no mistaking her delight in seeing Katie and Worth. And a
+sense of the old relationship was there--deep and tender sense of it;
+but something had gone from it, or been added to it. It was not the
+all in all.
+
+Truth was, Ann was more at home with her than she was with Ann.
+
+After luncheon they went up to Katie's room for a little chat. Katie
+talked about stenography and soon came to be conscious of that being a
+vapid thing to be talking about.
+
+"What pretty furs," she said, in the pause following the collapse of
+stenography.
+
+That seemed to mean more. "Yes, aren't they lovely?" responded Ann, with
+happy enthusiasm. "They were my Christmas present--from Wayne."
+
+The way Ann said Wayne--in the old days she had never said it at all--led
+instantly, though without her knowing by what path, to that strange fear
+of hers in finding Ann so free from fear.
+
+Ann was blushing a little: the "Wayne" had slipped out so easily, and so
+prettily. "He thought I needed them. It's often so cold here, you know."
+
+"Why certainly one needs furs," said Katie firmly, as if there could be
+no question as to _that_.
+
+Katie's great refuge was activity. She got up and began taking some
+dresses from her trunk.
+
+Then, just to show herself that she was not afraid, that there was
+nothing to be afraid about, she asked lightly: "What in the world brings
+Wayne up to New York so much?"
+
+Ann was affectionately stroking her muff. She looked up at Katie shyly,
+but with a warm little smile. There was a pause which seemed to hover
+over it before she said softly: "Why, Katie, I think perhaps I bring him
+up to New York."
+
+Everything in Katie seemed to tighten--close up. She gave her most
+cobwebby dress a perilous shake and said in flat voice: "Wayne's very
+kind, I'm sure."
+
+Ann did not reply; she was still stroking her muff; that smile which
+hovered tenderly over something had not died on her lips. It made her
+mouth, her whole face, softly lovely. It did something else. Made it
+difficult for Katie to go on pretending with herself.
+
+Though she made a last stand. It was a dreadful state of affairs, she
+told herself, if Ann had been so absurd as to fall in love with
+Wayne--_Wayne_--just because he had been kind in helping her get a start.
+
+She followed that desperately. "Oh yes, Wayne's really very kind at
+heart. And then of course he's always been especially interested in you,
+because of me."
+
+Ann looked up at her. The look kept deepening, sank far down beneath
+Katie's shallow pretense.
+
+"Well, Katie," Ann began, with the gentle dignity of one whom life has
+taken into the fold, "as long as we seem into this, I'd rather go on.
+Wayne said I was to do just as I liked about telling you. Just as it
+happened to come up. But I think you ought to know he is not interested
+in just the way you think." She paused before it, then said softly, with
+a tremulous pride: "He cares for me, Katie--and wants to marry me."
+
+"He can't do that! He _can't do that_!"
+
+It came quick and sharp. Quick and sharp as fire answering attack.
+
+She sat down. The sharpness had gone and her voice was shaking as she
+said: "You certainly must know, Ann, that he can't do that."
+
+So they faced each other--and the whole of it. It was all opened up now.
+
+"It's very strange to me," Katie added hotly, "that you wouldn't
+know that."
+
+It seemed impossible for Ann to speak; the attack had been too quick and
+too sharp; evidently, too unexpected.
+
+"I told him so," she finally whispered. "Told and told him so. That you
+would feel--this way. That it--couldn't be. He said no. That you
+felt--all differently--after last summer. And I thought so, too. Your
+letters sounded that way."
+
+Katie covered her eyes for a second. It was too much as if the things she
+was feeling differently about were the things she was losing.
+
+"And when you want to be happy," Ann went on, "it's not so hard to
+persuade yourself--be persuaded." She stopped with a sob.
+
+"I know that," was wrung wretchedly from Katie.
+
+"And since--since I _have_ been happy--let myself think it could be--it
+just hasn't seemed it _could_ be any other way. So I stopped
+thinking--hadn't been thinking--took it for granted--"
+
+Again it wrung from Katie the this time unexpressed admission that there
+was nothing much easier than coming to look upon one's happiness as the
+inevitable.
+
+"And Wayne kept saying," Ann went on, sobs back of her words, "that all
+human beings are entitled to work out their lives in their own way. You
+believed that, he said. And I--I thought you did, too. Your letters--"
+
+"No," said Katie bitterly, "what I believed was that _I_ was entitled to
+work out _my_ life in my own way. Wayne got his life mixed up with mine."
+
+The laugh which followed them was more bitter, more wretched than
+the words.
+
+She had persuaded herself the more easily that she was entitled to work
+out her life in her own way because she had assumed Wayne would be there
+to stand guard over the things left from other days. He was to stay
+there, fixed, leaving her free to go.
+
+She could not have explained why it was that the things she had been
+thinking did not seem to apply to Wayne.
+
+The thing grew to something monstrous. There whirled through her mind a
+frenzied idea as to what they would do about sending Major Barrett a
+wedding announcement.
+
+Other things whirled through her mind--as jeers, jibes, they came, a
+laugh behind them. A something somewhere was very commendable while it
+remained abstract! Having a fine large understanding about Ann had
+nothing to do with having Ann for a sister-in-law! "Calls" were less
+beautiful when responded to by one's brother! _This_ (and this tore an
+ugly wound) was what came of helping people in their quests for
+happiness.
+
+It was followed by a frantic longing to be with Mrs. Prescott--in the
+shelter of her philosophy, hugging tight those things left by the women
+of other days. Frightened, outraged, her impulse was to fly back to those
+well worn ways of yesterday.
+
+But that was running away. Ann was there. Ann with the radiance gone;
+though, for just that moment, less stricken than defiant. There was
+something of the cunning of the desperate thing cornered in the sullen
+flash with which she said: "You talked a good deal about wanting me to be
+happy. Used to think I had a right to be. When it was Captain Prescott--"
+
+It was unanswerable. The only answer Katie would be prepared to make to
+it was that she didn't believe, all things considered, it was a thing she
+would have said. But doubtless people lost nice shades of feeling when
+they became creatures at bay fighting for life.
+
+And seemingly one would leave nothing unused. "I want you to know,
+Katie, that I paid back that money. The missionary money. You made me
+feel that it wasn't right. That I--that I ought to pay it back. I earned
+the money myself--some work there was for me to do at school. I wanted
+to--to buy a white dress with it." Ann was sobbing. "But I didn't. I
+sent back the money."
+
+Katie was wildly disposed to laugh. She did not know why, after having
+worried about it so much, Ann's having paid back the missionary money
+should seem so irrelevant now. But she did not laugh, for Ann was looking
+at her as pleadingly, as appealingly, as Worth would have looked after he
+had been "bad" and was trying to redeem it by being "good."
+
+With a sob, Ann hid her face against her muff.
+
+Seeing her thus, Katie made cumbersome effort to drag things to less
+delicate, less difficult, ground.
+
+"Ann dear," she began, "I--oh I'm _so_ sorry about this. But truly, Ann,
+you wouldn't be at all happy with Wayne."
+
+Ann raised her face and looked at her with something that had a dull
+semblance to amusement.
+
+"You see," Katie staggered on, "Wayne hasn't a happy temperament. He's
+morose. Queer. It wouldn't do at all, Ann, because it would make you both
+wretchedly unhappy."
+
+She found Ann's faint smile irritating. "I ought to know," she added
+sharply, "for I've lived in the house with him most of my life."
+
+"You may have lived in the house with him, Katie," gently came Ann's
+overwhelming response. "You've never understood him."
+
+Katie openly gasped. But some of her anger passed swiftly into a
+wondering how much truth there might be in the preposterous statement.
+Wayne as "immune" was another idea jeering at her now. And that further
+assumption, which had been there all the while, though only now
+consciously recognized, that Wayne's knowing Ann's story, made Ann, to
+Wayne, impossible--
+
+Living in the same house with people did not seem to have a great deal to
+do with knowing their hearts.
+
+"Wayne," Ann had resumed, in voice low and shaken with feeling, "has the
+sweetest nature of any one in this world. He's been unhappy just because
+he hadn't found happiness. If you could see him with me, Katie, I don't
+think you'd say he had an unhappy nature--or worry much about our not
+being happy."
+
+Katie was silent, driven back; vanquished, less by the words than by the
+light they had brought to Ann's face.
+
+And what she had been wanting--had thought she was ready to fight
+for--was happiness--for every one.
+
+"Of course I know," Ann said, "that that's not it." That light had all
+gone from her face. It was twisted, as by something cruel, blighting, as
+she said just above a whisper: "There's no use pretending we don't know
+what it is."
+
+She turned her face away, shielding it with her muff.
+
+It was all there--right there between them--opened, live, throbbing. All
+that it had always meant--all that generations of thinking and feeling
+had left around it.
+
+And to Katie, held hard, it was true, all too bitterly true, that she
+came of what Mrs. Prescott called a long line of fine and virtuous
+women. In her misery it seemed that the one thing one need have no fear
+about was losing the things they had left one.
+
+But other things had been left her. The war virtues! The braving and the
+fighting and the bearing. Hardihood. Unflinchingness. Unwhimperingness.
+
+Those things fought within her as she watched Ann shaken with the sobs
+she was trying to repress.
+
+Well at least she would not play the coward's part with it! She brought
+herself to look it straight in the face. And what she saw was that if
+she could be brave enough to go herself into a more spacious country,
+leaving hurts behind, she must not be so cowardly, so ignobly
+inconsistent as to refuse the hurts coming to her through others who
+would dare. Through the conflict of many emotions, out of much misery,
+she at last wrenched from a sore heart the admission that Wayne had as
+much right to be "free" as she had. That if Ann had a right to happiness
+at all--and she had always granted her that--she had a right to this. It
+was only that now it was she who must pay a price for it. And perhaps
+some one always paid a price.
+
+"Ann?"
+
+Ann looked up into Katie's colorless, twitching face.
+
+"I hope you and Wayne will be very happy." It came steadily, and with an
+attempted smile.
+
+The next instant she was sobbing, but trying at the same time to tell Ann
+that sisters always acted that way when told of their brothers'
+engagements.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+She did not see her brother until evening. "Katie," he demanded sharply,
+"have you been disagreeable to Ann?"
+
+She shook her head. "I haven't meant to be, Wayne."
+
+Her face was so wretched that he grew contrite. "You're not pleased?"
+
+"Why, Wayne, you can scarcely expect me to be--wholly pleased, can you?"
+
+"But you always seemed to understand so well. I"--he paused in that
+constraint there so often was between them in things delicately
+intimate--"I've never told you, Katie, how fine I thought you were. So
+big about it."
+
+"It's not so difficult," said Kate, with a touch of her old smile, "to be
+'big' about people who aren't marrying into the family."
+
+It seemed that he, too, was not above cornering her. "You know, Katie, it
+was your attitude in the beginning that--"
+
+"Just don't bother calling my attention to that, Wayne," she said
+sharply. "Please credit me with the intelligence to see it for myself."
+
+Then she went right to the heart of it. "Oh Wayne--think of Major
+Barrett's _knowing_."
+
+The dull red that came quickly to his face told how bitterly he had
+thought of it, though he only said quietly: "Damn Barrett."
+
+"But you can't damn him. Suppose you were to be stationed at the
+same place!"
+
+He laughed shortly. "Well that, at least, is something upon which I can
+set your fears at rest."
+
+She looked up quickly. "What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean, Katie, that my army days are over."
+
+She stared at him. "I don't understand you."
+
+"It shouldn't be so difficult to comprehend. I have resigned my
+commission."
+
+"Wayne," she asked slowly, "what do you mean?"
+
+"Just what I say. That I have resigned my commission. That I am out of
+the army."
+
+It made it seem that the whole world was whirling round and round and
+that there was nothing to take hold of. "But you can't do that. Why your
+whole life is there--friends--traditions--work--future."
+
+"Not my future," he said briefly.
+
+His calm manner made it the more bewildering. "Wayne, I don't see how you
+can--in such a light manner--give up such a big thing!"
+
+He turned upon her in manner less calm. "What right have you to say that
+it is done in a 'light manner'!"
+
+The words had a familiar sound and she recalled them as like something
+she had said to Mrs. Prescott the day before; just the day before, when
+she had been so sure of things, and of herself.
+
+"But where is your future then, Wayne?" she asked appealingly. "We know,
+don't we, how hard it is for army men to find futures as civilians?"
+
+"I'm going into the forest service."
+
+Katie never could tell why, for the moment, it should have antagonized,
+infuriated her that way. "So that's it. That's what got--a poetic notion!
+And I suppose," she laughed scornfully, "you're going into the ranks?
+What is it they call them? Rangers? Starting in at your age--with your
+training--to 'work from the bottom up'--is that it?"
+
+"No," he replied coldly, "that is not it. You have missed it about as far
+as you could. I have no such picturesque notion. I am doing no such
+quixotic thing. I value my training too highly for that. It should be
+worth too much to them. I don't even scorn personal ambition, or the use
+of personal pull, so you see I'm a long way from a heroic figure. I know
+I've a brain that can do a certain type of thing. I know I'm well
+equipped. Well, so far as the equipment goes, my country did it for me
+and I mean to give it back; only I've got to do it in my own way."
+
+"Why, Katie," he resumed after a pause, "I never was more surprised in my
+life than to find you so out of sympathy with this. I knew what most
+people would think of it, but I quite took it for granted that you would
+understand."
+
+"It seems a little hard," replied Katie with a tearful laugh, "to
+understand the fine things other people do. And, Wayne, I'm so afraid it
+will lead to disappointment! Aren't you idealizing this forest service?
+Remember Fred's tales of how it's almost strangled by politics. And you
+know what that means. Let us not forget Martha Matthews!"
+
+It was a relief to be laughing together over a familiar thing. Martha
+Matthews was the daughter of a congressman from somewhere--Katie never
+could remember whether it was Texas or Wyoming. She had been asked to
+"take her up" at one time when the army appropriation bill was pending
+and Martha's father did not seem to realize that the country needed
+additional defense. But when Martha discovered that army people were
+"perfectly fascinating--and _so_ hospitable" Martha's parent suddenly
+awakened to the grave dangers confronting his land. Katie had more than
+once observed a mysterious relationship between the fact of the army set
+being fashionable in Washington and the fact that the country must be
+amply protected, further remarking that army people were just clever
+enough to know when to be fascinating.
+
+"No," he came back to it in seriousness, "I don't think I have many
+illusions. I know it's far from the perfect thing, but I see it as set
+in the right direction. It seems to me that that, in itself, ought to
+mean considerable. It's the best thing I know of--for what I have to
+offer. Then I want to get out of cities for awhile--get Ann away from
+them." He paused over that and fell silent. "Osborne offered me a job,"
+he came back to it with a laugh. "Seemed to think I was worth a very
+neat sum a year to his company--but that was scarcely my notion. In fact
+I doubt if I would have so much confidence in the forest service if it
+weren't for his hatred of it. You can judge a thing pretty well by the
+character of its enemies. Then I'm enough the creature of habit to want
+to go on in a service; I'm schooled to that thing of the collectivity.
+But I'll be happier in a service that--despite the weak spots in it--is
+in harmony with the big collectivity--rather than hopelessly discordant
+with it. And perhaps it needs some more or less disinterested fellows to
+help fight for it," he added with a touch of embarrassment, as if
+fearing to expose himself.
+
+He had come close enough to self-betrayal for Katie, despite her fear and
+confusion, to feel proud of him as he looked then.
+
+"Wayne," she asked, "have you felt this way a long time? Out of sympathy
+with the army?"
+
+He did not at once reply, thinking of the night he had sat beside Ann,
+night when the whole world was shaken and things he had regarded as fixed
+loosened and fell. Just how much had been loosening before that--some, he
+knew--just how much would have more or less insecurely held its place had
+it not been for that night, he was not prepared to say--even to himself.
+
+"Longer than I knew, I think," he came back to Katie. "One night last
+fall I went to a dinner and they drank our toast." He repeated it,
+very slowly. "'My country--may she always be right--but right or
+wrong--my country.'
+
+"I used to have the real thrill for that toast. That night it almost
+choked me. That 'right or wrong' is a spirit I can thrill to no longer.
+I'm more interested in getting it right.
+
+"Though I'll own it terrified me, just as it seems to you, to feel it
+slipping from me. Recently I had occasion to go up to West Point and I
+spent a whole day deliberately trying to get back my old feeling for
+things--the whole business that we know so well and that I used to
+love so much.
+
+"And, in a way, I could; but as for something gone. That day up at the
+Point was one of the saddest of my life. I still loved the trappings.
+They still called to me. But I knew that, for me, the spirit was dead.
+
+"Oh I have no sensational declarations to make about the army. I
+wouldn't even be prepared to say what I think about disarmament. It's
+more complex than most peace advocates seem to see. I only know that the
+army's not the thing for me. I can't go on in it, simply because my
+feeling for it is gone."
+
+He had been speaking slowly and seriously; his head was bent. Now he
+looked up at her. "It was at the close of that day--day up at West
+Point--that I resigned my commission. And if you had seen me that night,
+Katie, I doubt if you would reproach me with 'doing it lightly.'"
+
+The marks of struggle had come back to his face with the story of it.
+They told more than the words.
+
+"Forgive me," she said in her impetuous way. "No, I didn't know. How
+awful it is, Wayne, that we _don't_ know--about each other."
+
+She was forced to turn away; but after a moment controlled herself and
+turned back to add: "Wayne dear, I think you're right. I'm proud of you."
+
+"Oh, I'm entitled to no halo," he hastened to say. "It's the fellow who
+would do it without an income might be candidate for that."
+
+"But you _would_ do it without an income, Wayne," she insisted warmly.
+
+"I don't know. How can I tell whether I would or not?
+
+"And you'll be good to Ann?" he took advantage of her mood to press, as
+though that were the one thing she could do for him. "You know, how much
+she needs you, Katie."
+
+"I shall certainly want to be good to Ann," she murmured. "Though I don't
+think she needs me much--any more."
+
+Something about her went to his heart. "Why, Katie--we all need you."
+
+She shook her head; there were tears, but a smile with them. "Not much,
+Wayne. Not now. I'm not--indispensable. Though pray why should one wish
+to be anything so terrifying as indispensable?"
+
+"Will you take Worth?" she asked after a little while. "He goes--with
+you and Ann?"
+
+"We want him. And Katie, we want you. We're to go to Colorado and fight
+the water barons," he laughed. "Aren't you coming with us?"
+
+She shook her head. "Not just now. I want to flit round in the East a
+little first. Be gay--renew my youth," she laughed, choking a little.
+
+She drew him to talk of his hopes. "I'll fess up, Katie," he said, when
+warmed to it by her sympathy, "that I fear I do have rather a poetic
+notion about it. I want to _do_ something--something that will count,
+something set in the direction of the future. And I like the idea of
+going back to that old frontier--place where I was born--and where mother
+went through so much--and where father fought--and because of which he
+died. And serving out there now in a way that is just as live--just as
+vital--as the way he served then."
+
+He paused; they were both thinking of their father and mother, of how
+they might not have understood, of the sadness as well as the triumph
+there is in change, that tug at the heart that must so often come when
+the new generation sees a little farther down the road than older eyes
+can see, the ache in hearts left behind when children of a new day are
+called away from places endeared by habit into the incertitude and
+perhaps the danger of ways unworn.
+
+"Life seems too fine a thing, Katie, to spend it making instruments of
+destruction more deadly. It's not a very happy thought to think of their
+being used; and it's not a very stimulating one to think of their not
+being. In either case, it doesn't make one too pleased with one's
+vocation. And life seems a big enough thing," he added, a little
+diffidently, "to try pretty hard to get one's self right with it."
+
+He did not understand the way Katie was looking at him as she replied:
+"Yes, Wayne; I know that. I've been thinking that myself."
+
+Something moved her to ask: "Wayne, do you think you would have done it,
+if it had not been for Ann?"
+
+"I think," he replied quietly, "that possibly that is still another thing
+I have to thank her for." His face and voice gave Katie a sharp sense of
+loneliness, that loneliness which came in seeing how poorly she had
+understood him, how little people knew each other.
+
+They talked of a number of things before he suddenly exclaimed: "Oh
+Katie, I must tell you. That fellow--what's his name? Mann? The mythical
+being known as the man who mends the boats is a fellow you'll have to
+avoid, should you ever see him again--which of course is not likely."
+
+She had turned and was looking out at the lights in the street
+below. "Yes?"
+
+"Who do you suppose the scoundrel _is_?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," she faltered.
+
+"A military _convict_. Attacked an officer. Served time at Leavenworth."
+
+Katie was intent upon the lights down below.
+
+"And what do you suppose he was prying around the Island for?"
+
+"I'm sure I have no idea," she managed to say.
+
+"Going to write a _play_--a play about the _army_! Now what do you
+think of that? Darrett found out about it. Oh just the man, you see, to
+write a play about the army! And some sensationalists here are going to
+put it on. It's the most damnable insolence I ever heard of! They ought
+to stop it."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Katie, still absorbed in the cabs down below;
+"a man has a right to use his experiences--in a play."
+
+"Well a fine view he'll give of it! It's the most insufferable
+impertinence I ever knew of!"
+
+She turned around to ask oddly: "Why, Wayne, why all this heat? You're
+not in the army any more."
+
+"Well, don't you think I'm not _of_ it, when an upstart like that turns
+up to rail at it!"
+
+"But how do you know he'll rail?"
+
+"Oh he'll rail, all right. I know his type. But we'll see to it that it's
+pretty generally understood it's military life as presented by a military
+_convict_."
+
+"Perhaps you can trust him to make that point clear himself," said Katie
+rather dryly.
+
+"The _coward_. The _cur_."
+
+She turned upon him hotly. "Look here, Wayne, I don't know why you're so
+sure you have a right to say that!"
+
+"I'd like to know why I haven't! Attacked an officer without the
+slightest provocation whatsoever! Some kind of a hot-headed taking sides
+with a deserter, I believe it was. I suppose this remarkable play is to
+be a glorification of desertion," he laughed.
+
+"Well," said Katie with an unsteady laugh, "perhaps there are worse
+things to glorify than desertion."
+
+He stared at her. "Come now, Katie, you know better than that."
+
+But Katie was looking at him strangely. "Wayne," she said quietly,
+"you're a deserter, yourself."
+
+He flushed, but after an instant laughed. "Really, Katie, you have a
+positive genius for saying preposterous things."
+
+"In which there may occasionally lurk a little truth. You _are_
+deserting. Why aren't you?"
+
+"I call that about as close to rot as an intelligent person could come,"
+he replied hotly. "I'm resigning my commission. It's perfectly regular."
+
+"Yes; being an officer and a gentleman, you _can_ resign your commission,
+and have it perfectly regular. Being that same officer and gentleman, you
+never were mugged--treated as a prospective criminal; no four thousand
+posters bearing your picture will now be sent broadcast over the country;
+no fifty dollars is offered lean detectives for your capture; you're in
+no chance of being thrown into prison and have your government do all in
+its power to wring the manhood out of you! Oh no--an officer and a
+gentleman--you resign your commission and go ahead with your life. But
+you're leaving the army, aren't you? Deserting it. And why? Because you
+don't like the spirit of it. And yet--though you're too big for
+it--though it's _time_ for you to desert--you're enough bound by it not
+to let the light of your intelligence fall for one single second on the
+question of desertion!"
+
+She had held him. He made no reply, looking in bewilderment at her red
+cheeks and blazing eyes.
+
+Suddenly her face quivered. "Wayne," she said, "I don't use the term as
+a hard name. I'm not using it in just its technical sense, our army
+sense. But mayn't desertion be a brave thing? A fine thing? To desert a
+thing we've gone beyond--to have the courage to desert it and walk right
+off from the dead thing to the live thing--? Oh, don't mind my calling
+you a deserter, Wayne," she added, her eyes full of tears, "for the
+truth is I'd like to be a deserter myself. But perhaps one deserter is
+enough for a family--and you beat me to it." She laughed and turned back
+to the cabs.
+
+He wanted to go on with the argument; show her what it was in desertion
+that army men despised, make the distinction between deserting and
+resigning. But the truth was he was more interested in the things Katie
+had said than in the things which could be called in refutation.
+
+And Katie puzzled him; her heat, feeling, not only astonished but worried
+him a little. She was standing there now beating a tattoo on the window
+pane. He wondered what she was thinking about. The experience as to Ann
+revealed Katie to him as having thought about things he would not have
+dreamed she was thinking about. What in the world did she mean by saying
+she'd like to be a deserter herself? One of her preposterous sayings--but
+it was true that considerable truth had often lurked at the heart of
+Katie's absurd way of talking.
+
+Watching her, he was drawn to thought of her attractiveness and that made
+him wonder whom Katie would marry. He had always been secretly proud of
+his sister's popularity; it seemed she should make a brilliant marriage.
+Live brilliantly. It was the thing to which she was adapted. Katie was
+unique. Distinctive. Secretly, unadmittedly, he was very ambitious for
+her. And with a little smile he considered that seemingly Katie was just
+shrewd enough to be ambitious for herself. She had steered her little
+bark safely past the place where she would be likely to marry a
+lieutenant. Was she heading for a general?
+
+So he reflected with humor and affection, watching Katie beat the tattoo
+on the window.
+
+Thought of what some one had said of her as the army girl suggested
+something that changed his mood, bringing him suddenly to his feet.
+"Katie," he demanded, "how much did you ever talk to this fellow? You
+don't think, do you, that he was trying to get you for his 'army
+girl'--or some such rot? If I thought that--You don't think, do you,
+Katie, that that was what he was trying to work you for?"
+
+Katie suddenly raised her hands and pushed back her hair, for the minute
+covering her eyes. "No, Wayne," she said, "I don't think that was what he
+was trying to 'work me' for."
+
+And unable to bear more, she told him that she was very tired and asked
+him to go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+Katie Jones was very gay that winter. She made her home at her uncle's,
+near Washington, though most of the time she was in Washington itself,
+with various cousins and friends; there were always people wanting Katie,
+especially that winter, when she had such unfailing zest for gayety.
+
+They wondered that she should not be more broken up at her brother's
+absurd move in quitting the army--just at the time the army offered him
+so much. She seemed to take it very easily; though Katie was not one to
+take things hard, too light of spirit for that. And they wondered about
+his marriage to a girl whom nobody but Katie knew anything about. Katie
+seemed devoted to her and happy in the marriage.
+
+"Why, naturally I am pleased," she said to a group of army people who
+were inquiring about Wayne's bride. "She is my best friend. The girl I
+care most about."
+
+Major Darrett was one of the group. Some one turned to him and asked if
+he had met her when she visited Katie at the Arsenal the summer before.
+He replied that he had had that pleasure and that she was indeed
+beautiful and very charming.
+
+Katie hated him the more for having to be grateful to him.
+
+She knew that he was sorry for her and grew more and more gay. She could
+not talk of it, so was left to disclaim tragedy in frivolity. It was
+royally disclaimed.
+
+There were a few serious talks with older army men, men who had known her
+father and who were outraged at Wayne's leaving the army when he was
+worth so much to it and it to him. In her efforts to make them see, she
+was forced to remember what the man who mended the boats said of their
+lack of hospitality. They were unable to entertain the idea of there
+being any reason for a man's leaving the army when he was being as well
+treated in it as Wayne was. Katie's explanations only led them to shake
+their heads and say: "Poor Wayne."
+
+It was impossible to bury certain things in her, for those were the
+things she must use in defending Wayne. And in defending him, especially
+to her uncle, she was forced to know how far those things were from being
+decently prepared for burial. She was never more gay than after one of
+her defenses of her brother.
+
+The winter had passed and it was late in April, not unlike that May day
+just the year before when she had first seen her sister-in-law. Try as
+she would she could not keep her thoughts from that day and all that it
+had opened up.
+
+She had received a letter from her sister-in-law that morning. It was
+hard to realize that the writer of that letter was the Ann of the
+year before.
+
+Her thoughts of Ann led seductively to the old wonderings which Ann had
+in the beginning opened up. She wondered how many of the people with whom
+things were all wrong, people whom good people called bad people, were
+simply people who had been held from their own. She wondered how many of
+those good people would have remained good people had life baffled them,
+as it had some of the bad people. The people whom circumstances had made
+good people were so sure of themselves. She had observed that it was from
+those who had never sailed stormy waters came the quickest and harshest
+judgments on bad seamanship in heavy seas.
+
+Ann had met Helen and did not seem to know just what to think about her.
+"She's nice, Katie," she wrote, "but I don't understand her very well.
+She has so many strange ideas about things. Wayne thinks you and she
+would get on famously. She doesn't seem afraid of anything and wants to
+do such a lot of things to the world. I'm afraid I'm selfish; I'm so
+happy in my own life--it's all so wonderful--that I can't get as excited
+about the world as Helen does."
+
+And yet Ann would not have found the world the place she had found it
+were it the place Helen would have it. But Ann had found joy and
+peace--safety--and was too happy in her own life to get excited about the
+world--and thought Helen a little queer!
+
+That was Ann's type--and that was why there were Anns.
+
+Ann was radiant about the mountains and their life in them. "Helen said
+it about right, Katie. They're hard on the hair and the skin--but good
+for the soul!" They would be for the summer in one of the most beautiful
+mountain towns of Colorado and wanted Katie to come and bring Worth.
+Wayne had consented to leave him for a time with Katie at their uncle's.
+That Katie knew for a concession received for staying in New York with
+Ann until after her marriage.
+
+She believed she would go. She was so tired of Zelda Fraser that she
+would like to meet Helen. And she would like the mountains. Perhaps they
+would do something for _her_ soul--if she had not danced it quite away.
+She was getting very wretched about having to be so happy all the time.
+
+She was on her way to Zelda's that afternoon, Zelda having asked her to
+come in for a cup of tea and a talk. A whiff of some new scandal, she
+supposed. That was the basis of most of Zelda's "talks."
+
+Though possibly she had some things to tell about Harry Prescott's
+approaching marriage to Caroline Osborne. Katie had been asked to be a
+bridesmaid at that wedding.
+
+"While we have known each other but a short time," Caroline had written
+in her too sweet way, "I feel close to you, Katie, because it was through
+you Harry and I came together. Then whom would we want as much as you!
+And as it is to be something of an army wedding, may I not have you, whom
+Harry calls the 'most bully army girl' he ever knew?"
+
+Mrs. Prescott had also written Katie the glad news, saying she was happy,
+believing Caroline would make Harry a good wife. Katie was disposed to
+believe that she would and was emphatically disposed to believe that Mr.
+Osborne would make Harry a good father-in-law. Katie's knowledge of army
+finances led her to appreciate the value of the right father-in-law for
+an officer and gentleman who must subsist upon his pay.
+
+But she had made an excuse about the wedding, in no mood to be a
+bridesmaid, especially to a bride who would enter the bonds of matrimony
+on the banks of the Mississippi, just opposite a certain place where
+boats were mended.
+
+She walked on very fast toward Zelda's, trying to occupy the whole of her
+mind with planning a new gown.
+
+But Zelda had more tender news to break that day than that of a new
+scandal. "Katie," she approached it, in Zelda's own delicate fashion,
+"what would you think of Major Darrett and me joy-riding through life
+together?"
+
+"I approve of it," said Katie, with curious heartiness.
+
+"Some joy-ride, don't you think?"
+
+"I can fancy," laughed Katie, "that it might be hard to beat. I think,"
+she added, "that he's just the one for you to marry. And I further think,
+Zelda, that you're just the one for him to marry."
+
+Zelda looked at her keenly. "No slam on either party?"
+
+"On the contrary, a sort of double-acting approval," she turned it
+with a laugh.
+
+"Then as long as your approval has a back action, so to speak, I cop you
+out right now, Katie, for a bridesmaid."
+
+"Don't," said Katie quickly. "No, Zelda, I'm not--suitable."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, too old and worn," she laughed. "Bridesmaids should be buds."
+
+"Showing up the full-blowness of the bride? Don't you think it!"
+
+"So you hastened to get me!"
+
+"Come now, Katie, you know very well why I want you. Why wouldn't I want
+you? Anyhow," she exposed it, "father wants you. Father thinks you're so
+nice and respectable, Katie."
+
+"And so, for that matter," she added, "does my chosen joy-rider."
+
+"I'm not so sure of his being particularly impressed with my
+respectability," replied Katie.
+
+"He's always been quite dippy about you, Katie. I don't know how _I_
+ever got him."
+
+Zelda spoke feelingly of the approaching nuptials of her old school
+friend. "Cal's considerable of a prissy, but take it from me, Harry
+Prescott will see that all father's money doesn't pour into homes for the
+friendless--so there's something accomplished. Heaven help the poor
+fellow who must live on his pay," sighed Zelda piously.
+
+Major Darrett, too, was to be congratulated on his father-in-law. Just
+the father-in-law for a man ambitious to become military attache.
+
+It was nice, Katie told herself as she walked away, to know of so many
+weddings. She insisted upon asserting to herself that she was glad all
+her friends were getting on so famously.
+
+Though if Zelda persisted, she would have to go West earlier than she had
+planned. She could not regard Ann's sister-in-law as suitable person for
+attendant at Major Darrett's wedding. That would be a little _too_ much
+like playing the clown at a masked ball.
+
+The image was suggested by seeing one of those grotesque figures across
+the street. He was advertising some approaching festivity. With the clown
+was a monkey. He put the monkey down on the sidewalk and it danced
+obediently in just the place where it was put down.
+
+Suddenly it seemed to Katie that she was for all the world like that
+monkey--dancing obediently in the place where she was put down, not
+asking about the before or after, just dutifully being gay. That monkey
+did not know the great story about monkeys; doubtless he was even too
+degraded by clowns to yearn for a tree. He only danced at the end of the
+string the clown held--all else shut out.
+
+She--shutting out the before and after--was that pathetically festive
+little monkey; and society was the clown holding the string--the whole of
+it advertising the tawdry thing the clown called life.
+
+Only _she_ knew that there were trees. She had danced frantically in
+seeking to forget them, but the string pulled by the clown fretted her
+more and more.
+
+She could not make clear to herself why it had seemed that if Wayne were
+to be "free," she could not be; it was as if all the things she had
+worked out for herself had been appropriated by her brother. Everybody
+could not go into more spacious countries! There were some who must stay
+behind and make it right for the deserters.
+
+Wayne's marrying Ann had turned her back to familiar paths. It had
+terrified her. There seemed too much involved, too little certainty as to
+where one would find one's self if one left the well-known ways.
+
+She had been put in the position of the one hurt just when she had been
+steeled to bring the hurt. It gave her a new sense of the
+hurts--uncertainty as to the right to deal them.
+
+And probably no monkey would dance more obediently than the monkey
+who had run away and been frightened at a glimpse of the vastness of
+the forest.
+
+She would have to remain and explain Wayne, because she felt responsible
+about Wayne. It was her venturings had found what had led Wayne to
+venture--and, in the end, go. How could she outrage the army as long as
+Wayne had done so?
+
+So it had seemed to Katie in her hurt and bewilderment. And the
+bewilderment came chiefly because of the hurt. It appalled her to find it
+did hurt like that.
+
+But it was spring--and she knew that there were trees!
+
+She paused and watched a gardener removing some debris that had covered a
+flower bed. It was spring, and there were new shoots and this gardener
+was wise and tender in taking the old things away, that the new shoots
+might have air. Katie could see them there--and tender green of them, as
+he lifted the old things away that the growing things might come through.
+The gardener did not seem to feel he was cruel in taking the dead things
+away. As a good gardener, he would scout the idea of its being unkind to
+take them away just because they had been there so long. What did that
+matter, the wise gardener would scornfully demand, when there were
+growing things underneath pushing their way to the light?
+
+And if he were given to philosophizing he might say that the kindest
+thing even to the dead things was to let the new things come through.
+Thus life would be kept, and all the life that had ever been upon the
+earth perpetuated, vindicated, glorified.
+
+It seemed to Katie that what life needed was a saner gardener. Not a
+gardener who would smother new shoots with a lot of dead things telling
+how shoots should go.
+
+She drew a deep breath, lifted her face to the sky, and _knew_. Knew that
+she herself had power to push through the dead things seeking to smother
+her. Knew that if she but pushed on they must fall away because it was
+life was pushing them away.
+
+She walked on slowly, breathing deep.
+
+And swinging along in the April twilight she had a sense of having
+already set her face toward a more spacious country. And of knowing that
+it had been inevitable all the time that she should go. The delay had
+been but the moment's panic. Her life itself mattered more than what any
+group of people thought about her life.
+
+Spring!--and new life upon the earth. It was that life itself, not the
+philosophy men had formulated for or against it, was pushing the dead
+things away. It was not even arrested by the fear of displacing
+something.
+
+She had held herself back for so long that in the very admission that she
+longed to see him there was joy approaching the sweetness of seeing him.
+A long time she walked in the April twilight--knowing that it was
+spring--and that there was new life upon the earth.
+
+Harry Prescott would be married within two weeks. It seemed nothing was
+so important as that she witness that ceremony. Dear Harry Prescott, who
+would be married on the banks of the Mississippi, close by a certain
+place where boats were mended.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+It was hard for Katie to contain her delight in Wayne's generosity when
+she found he had left his launch with Captain Prescott. "Now wasn't that
+just sweet of father?" she exulted to Worth as they walked together down
+to the little boat house.
+
+Worth was more dispassionate. "Y--es; but why wouldn't he, Aunt Kate?
+Where would he take it?"
+
+"Well, but it's just so nice, dearie, that it's here."
+
+"You going out in it?" he demanded.
+
+Katie looked around. Some soldiers and some golfers in the distance, but
+like the day Ann had come upon the Island, no one within immediate range.
+
+"Watts says she's running like a bird, Aunt Kate. Somebody was out this
+morning and somebody's going again this afternoon."
+
+"Maybe she won't be here for them to take!"
+
+"You going to take it, Aunt Kate?" he pressed excitedly.
+
+"Well, I don't just _know_, Worth." She looked up the river. She could
+see a part of the little island where she had once pulled in to ask about
+the underlying principles of life, but not being able to see the other
+side of it, how could she be sure whether a launch ride was what she
+wanted or not?
+
+"Father says we mustn't go in it alone, Aunt Kate. Shall I see if we can
+get Watts?"
+
+"N--o; that's not exactly the idea," said Aunt Kate, stepping into
+the launch.
+
+"Goin', Aunt Kate?"
+
+"Why--I don't know. I thought I'd just _sit_ in it a little while."
+
+So Worth joined her for the delightful pastime of just sitting in it for
+a little while.
+
+"I'd rather like to find out whether it's in good condition." She turned
+to Worth appealing. "It seems we ought to be able to tell father whether
+they're taking good care of it, doesn't it, Worth?"
+
+"I guess I'll go and get Watts."
+
+"I don't know why, but I don't seem able to get up a great deal of
+enthusiasm for that idea." Her fingers were upon the steering wheel,
+longingly. Eyes, too, were longing. Suddenly she started the engine.
+"We'll just run round the head of the Island," she said.
+
+So they started up the river--the river as blue and lovely as it had been
+that day a year before when she had cheated it, and had begun to see that
+life was cheating her.
+
+"Worth," she asked, "what is there on the _other_ side of that
+little island?"
+
+"Why, Aunt Kate--why on the other side of it is the man that mends
+the boats."
+
+"Oh, that so? Funny I never thought of that.
+
+"But I suppose," she began again, "he wouldn't be very likely to be there
+mending boats now?"
+
+"Why yes, Aunt Kate, he might be."
+
+"You heard anything about him, Worth?"
+
+"Yes sir; Watts says he has cut him _out_. He says he's _on_ to him."
+
+"That must be a bitter blow," said Aunt Kate. "Watts getting _on_ to
+one--and cutting one out.
+
+"Watts say anything about whether he was still mending boats?" she asked
+in the off-hand manner people adopt for vital things.
+
+"Why I guess he is, 'cause he made a speech last week--oh there was a
+whole _lot_ of men--and he just _sowed seeds of discontentment_."
+
+"Such a busy little sower!" murmured Aunt Kate lovingly.
+
+She knew that he was there, or at least had been there the week before,
+for just as she was leaving her uncle's she had received a note from him.
+They had not been writing to each other since the brief letter she had
+sent him the day after receiving the announcement of her brother's
+engagement. This note had been written to tell her no special thing;
+simply because, he said, after trying his best for a number of weeks, he
+was not longer able to keep from writing. He wrote because he couldn't
+help it. He had determined to love her too well to urge her to do what,
+knowing it all, she evidently felt could not hold happiness for her. But
+the utter desolation of life without her had crumbled the foundation of
+that determination.
+
+In the note he said that his boat-mending days were about over.
+They would not have lasted that long only he had had no heart for
+other things.
+
+But the letter gave Katie heart for other things! Its unmistakable
+wretchedness made her superbly radiant.
+
+"Why, Worthie," she exclaimed, "just see here! Here's the very place
+where we landed that other time."
+
+"Oh yes, Aunt Kate--it's still here."
+
+She smiled; he could not have done better had he been trying.
+
+"Now I wonder if I could make that landing again. I was proud of the way
+I did that before. I don't suppose I could do it again."
+
+That baited him. "Oh yes, I guess you could, Aunt Kate. You just try it."
+
+She demonstrated her skill and then they once more enjoyed the delightful
+pastime of just sitting in the launch.
+
+Katie's eyes were misty, her lips trembled to a tender smile as she
+finally turned to him. "Worth dear, will you do something for your
+Aunt Kate?"
+
+"Sure I will, Aunt Kate." Suddenly he guessed it. "Want me to get the man
+that mends the boats?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I'll _try_ and get him for you, Aunt Kate."
+
+"Try pretty hard, Worthie."
+
+He started, but turned back. "What'll I tell him, Aunt Kate?"
+
+The smile had lingered and the eyes were wonderfully soft just then.
+"Tell him I'm here again and want to find out some more about the
+underlying principles of life."
+
+"The--now what is it, Aunt Kate?"
+
+"Well just say life," she laughed tremulously. "Life'll do."
+
+She found it hard to keep from crying. There had been too much. It had
+been too long. It was not with clear vision she looked over at the big
+house where Harry Prescott's wedding feast would be served on the morrow.
+
+It seemed that about half of her life had passed before Worth came
+back--alone.
+
+Pretense fell away. "Didn't you get him?"
+
+"Why, Aunt Kate, there's another man there. But don't you feel so bad,
+Aunt Kate," he hastened. "We will get him, 'cause that other man is going
+to tell him."
+
+"Oh, he--then he is here?"
+
+"Oh yes, he's here. He's just over at the shop."
+
+"I see," said Aunt Kate, very much engaged with something she appeared to
+think was trying to get in her eye.
+
+"But, Worth," she asked, when she had blinked the gnat away, "what did
+you tell this other man?"
+
+"Why, I just told him. Told him you was here and wanted the _other_
+man that mended the boats. The first man. The big man, I said. He
+knows who I mean."
+
+"I should hope so," she murmured.
+
+"But what did you tell him I wanted to see him _for_?" she asked,
+suddenly apprehensive.
+
+Worth had sat down and begun upon a raft. "Why, I just told him. Told him
+you had come to find out some more about life."
+
+"_Worth!_ Told that to a _strange_ man!"
+
+"But I guess he didn't know what I meant, Aunt Kate. He's one of those
+awful dumb folks that talk mostly in foreign languages. I think he's some
+kind of a French Pole--or _something_."
+
+She breathed deeper. "Oh, well perhaps one's confidences would be
+safe--with a French Pole."
+
+"So he knows you want him, Aunt Kate, but he don't know just what you
+want him for."
+
+"Yes; that's quite as well, I think," said Aunt Kate.
+
+The other half of her life had almost passed when again there were
+footsteps--very hurried footsteps, these were.
+
+It was not the French Pole, though some one who did not seem at home with
+the English tongue, some one who stood there looking at her as if he,
+too, wanted to cry.
+
+Worth was the self-possessed member of the party. "Hello there," he said;
+"it's been a long time since we saw you, ain't it?"
+
+"It seems to me to have been a--yes, a long time," replied the man who
+mended the boats, never taking his eyes from Katie.
+
+Saying nothing more, he pulled in her boat, secured it. Held out his hand
+to help her out--forgot to let go the hand when her feet were upon firm
+earth. Acted, Worth thought, as though he thought somebody was going to
+_hurt_ her.
+
+A steamboat was coming down the river. And Worth!--a much interested
+Worth. The man who mended the boats did not seem to find his
+surroundings all he could ask.
+
+"I want to show you this island," he began. "It's really quite a
+remarkable island. You know, I've been _wanting_ to show it to you.
+There's a stone over here--quite--quite an astonishing stone. And a
+flower. Queer. Really an astounding flower. I don't believe you ever saw
+one like it."
+
+"Pooh!" said Worth, starting on ahead. "I bet _I've_ seen one like it."
+
+"Say--I'll tell you what I'll bet _you_. I'll bet you two dollars and a
+quarter you can't get that raft done before we get back!"
+
+"Well I'll just bet _you_ two dollars and a _half_ that I _can_!"
+
+"It's a go!"--and Aunt Kate and the man who mended the boats were off to
+find the astonishing stone and the astounding flower, Worth calling after
+them: "Now you try to keep him, Aunt Kate. Keep him as long as you can."
+
+It was after she had succeeded in keeping him long enough for
+considerable headway to have been made in raft-construction that he
+exclaimed: "Katie, will you do something for me?"
+
+Her eyes were asking what there could be that she would not do for him.
+
+"Then _laugh,_ Katie. Oh if you could know how I've longed to hear you
+_laugh_ again."
+
+She did laugh, but a sob overtook the laugh. Then laughed again and ran
+away from the sob. But the laugh was sweeter for the sob.
+
+"You _will_ laugh, Katie, won't you?" he asked with an anxiety that
+touched deep things.
+
+"Why there'll be days and days when I shan't do anything else!" Then her
+laughing eyes grew serious. "Though just a little differently, I think.
+I've heard the world sobbing, you know."
+
+"But a world that is sobbing needs Katie's laughing." He drew her to him
+with something not unlike a sob. "I need it, I know."
+
+There was a wonderful sense of saving herself in knowing again that the
+world was sobbing. What she could have borne no longer was drowning the
+world's sobs in the world's hollow laughter.
+
+"Katie," he cried, after more time had elapsed without finding either the
+astonishing stone or the astounding flower, "here's a little sunny path!
+I want you to walk in it."
+
+Laughingly he pushed her over into the narrow strip of sunshine, where
+there was just room for Katie's feet.
+
+But Katie shook her head. "What do I care about sunny paths, if I must
+walk them alone?" And laughing, too, but with a deepening light in her
+eyes, she held out her hand to him.
+
+But it was such a narrow sunny path; there was not room for two.
+
+So Katie made room for him by stepping part way out of the sunshine
+herself. Smiling, but eyes speaking for the depth of the meaning, she
+said: "I'd rather be only half in the sunshine than be--"
+
+"Be what, Katie?" he whispered.
+
+"Be without you."
+
+"Katie," he asked passionately, "you mean that if walking together we
+can't always be all in the sunshine--?"
+
+"The thing that matters," said Katie, "is walking together."
+
+"Over roads where there might be no sunshine? Rough, steep roads,
+perhaps?"
+
+"Whatever kind, of roads they may be," said Katie, with the steadiness
+and the fervor of a devotee repeating a prayer.
+
+They stood there as shadows lengthened across sunny paths, thinking of
+the years behind and the years ahead, now speaking of what they would do,
+now folded in exquisite silences.
+
+And after the fashion of happy lovers who must hover around calamities
+averted, he exclaimed: "Suppose Ann had never come!"
+
+It sent her heart out in a great tenderness to Ann: Ann, out in her
+mountains, and happy. Nor was the tenderness less warm in the thought
+that Ann would join with Wayne and the others in deploring. Ann, who was
+within now, would, Katie knew, grieve over her going without.
+
+But that was only because Ann did not wholly understand. Everything the
+matter with everybody was just that they did not wholly understand. She
+grew tender toward all the world.
+
+There rose before her vision of a possible day when all would understand;
+when none would wish another ill or work another harm; when war and
+oppression and greed must cease, not because the laws forbade them, but
+because men's hearts gave them no place.
+
+"I see it!" she whispered unconsciously.
+
+Her face was touched with the fine light of visioning. "See what--dear
+Katie? Take _me_ in."
+
+"The world when love has saved it!" She remembered their old dispute and
+her arms went about his neck as she told him again: "Why 'tis _love_ must
+save the world!"
+
+He held her face in his two hands as if he could not look deeply enough.
+And as he looked into her eyes a nobler light was in his own.
+
+"As it has saved us," he whispered.
+
+They grew very still, hushed by the wonder of it. In their two hearts
+there seemed love enough to redeem the world.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Visioning, by Susan  Glaspell
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