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.