It came to Katie in what large measure they all could do very much as they pleased. It was a game they played, and great liberty was accorded them in that game so long as they took their liberty in accordance with the prescribed rules of that game. But they guarded their own privileges with an intolerance for all those outside their game who would take privileges of their own. That--labeled a respect for good form--was in reality their method of self-defense.

She looked at Zelda Fraser--Zelda with her bold black eyes, her red cheeks which she made still redder--and her _hair_--as long as people were "wearing" hair Zelda wore a little more than any one else. Nothing about her suggested anything so redeeming as a quest for Something Somewhere. No veiled splendor of a dream hovered tenderly over Zelda.

Watching her as she bantered with Major Barrett it grew upon Katie as one of the grotesque things of the world that Zelda should be within and Ann without.

Major Barrett had remained. It was Ann who had gone. Yet it was Ann had dreamed the dream. He who had made the "excursion" despoiling the dream.

It was Ann had been "called." He who had preyed upon--cheated--that call.

Yet she had not sent him away. She was too much in the game for that.

She had not seemed to have the power. Certainly she had not had the wit nor the courage. He had remained and taken command. She had done as he told her.

He was smiling approvingly upon her now, manifestly proud of the way Katie was playing the game.

Seeing it as a thing to win his approval she could with difficulty continue it. She was thankful that the dinner itself had drawn to a close.

Later, on the porch, Caroline Osborne asked for Ann. Zelda and Major Darrett and Harry Prescott were in the group at the time.

"You mean she is not coming back?" she pursued in response to Katie's statement that Ann had been called away.

"I don't know," said Katie. "I'm afraid not."

"Who is she, Katie?" Zelda asked.

"No one you know."

Zelda turned to Prescott. "You know her?"

"Yes," he said. His voice told Katie how hard he was finding it just then to play the game.

"Like her?"

"Yes," he replied.

Zelda threw back her head in an impertinent way of hers that was called engaging. "Love her?"

He stepped nearer Katie, as if for protection. His smile was a dead smile.

"Really, Zelda," said Katie, in laughing protest.

"I just wondered," said Zelda, "if she was going to marry into the army."

Katie saw Major Darrett's smile.

"If she did," she said, "the army would gain something that might do it good."

Major Darrett was staring at her speechlessly. Harry gratefully. "You're very fond of her?" said Caroline Osborne in her sweet-toned way.

"Very," said Kate in way less sweet.

"Too bad we missed her," said Zelda, "especially if she would do us good.

Now Cal here's going in for doing good, too. Only she's not trying to do it to the army. She's doing it to the working people."

"Get the distinction," laughed the Major.

"I must get hold of some stunt like that," said Zelda. "The world's getting stuntier and stuntier." She turned to Major Darrett. "Whom do you think I could do good to?"

"Me," he said, and they strolled laughingly away together.

A few minutes later Katie found herself alone with Captain Prescott.

"Katie," he asked pleadingly, "where has Ann gone?"

"She's been called away, Harry. She's--gone away."

"But won't she be back?"

Katie turned away. "I don't know. I'm afraid not."

"Katie," he besought, "won't you help me? Won't you tell me where I can find her? I know--something's the matter. I know--something's strange.

But I want to see her! I want to find her!"

"I want to see her!--I want to find her!"--It invaded the chamber in Katie's heart she would keep inexorably shut. She dared not speak.

But he was waiting, and she was forced to speak. "Harry, I'm afraid you'll have to forget Ann," she said unsteadily. "I'm afraid you'll have to--" Because she could not go on, sure if she did she would not be able to go on with the evening, she laughed. "I'll tell you what you do," she said briskly. "Marry Caroline Osborne. She's going to have heaps of money and will go in for philanthropy. 'Twill be quite stunty. Don't you see, even Zelda thinks it stunty?"

He stepped back. "I had thought, Katie,"--and his voice pierced her armor--"that you were kind."

She dared not let in anything so human as a hurt. "Well that's where you're wrong. I'm not kind," she said harshly.

"So I see," he answered unsteadily.

But of a sudden the fact that he had been drawn to Ann drew her irresistibly to him. He had been part of all those wonderful days--days of dream and play, or waking and wondering. She remembered that other night they had stood on the porch speaking of Ann--the very night she had become Ann. That fact that he had accepted her as Ann--cared for her--made it impossible to harden her heart against him. "Oh Harry," she said, voice shaking, "I'm sorry. So sorry. It's my fault--and I'm sorry.

I didn't want you to be hurt. I didn't want--anybody to be hurt."

Some one called to him and he had to turn away. She stepped into the shadow and had a moment to herself.

What did it _mean_--she wondered. That one was indeed bound hand and foot and brain and heart and spirit?

What had she done save prove that she could do nothing?

Ann had been driven away. And in her house now were Zelda Fraser and Caroline Osborne and Major Darrett and all those others who were not dreamers of dreams. And the dream betrayed--she felt one with _them_.

For she had turned the dream out of doors with Ann: the wonderful dream which sheltered the heart of reality, dream through which waking had come, from which all the long dim paths of wondering had opened--dream through which self had called.

And what was there left?

A house of hollow laughter was left--of pretense--"stunts"--of prescribed rules and intolerance with all breakers of rules even though the breakers of rules were dreamers of dreams.

With a barely repressed sob she remembered what Ann had said in her story of her dog. "I could have stood my own lonesomeness. But what I couldn't stand was thinking about him.... I couldn't keep from thinking things that tortured me."