"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?"