"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.