"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."