"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.