she spoke it with deep feeling. "I say _nothing's_ too precious to be touched--if touching it can make things better!"

Mrs. Prescott had gone below. Katie feared that she had wounded her, and was sorry. She had not been able to help it. The face of that immigrant girl was too tragically eager.

They were almost in now, close to Governor's Island, over which the flag was flying. It gripped her as it had never done before.

"Boy," she said to Worth, perched on a coil of rope beside her, "there's your country. Country your people came to a long time ago, and fought for, and some of them died for. And you'll grow up, Worth, and _you'll_ fight for it. Not the way they fought; it won't need you to fight for it that way; _they_ did that--and now that's done. But there will be lots for you to fight for, too; harder fights to fight, I think, than any they fought. You'll fight to make it a better place for men and women and little children to live in. Not by firing guns at other men, Worth, but by being as wise and kind and as honest and fair as you know how to be."

It was her voice moved him; it had been vibrant with real passion.

But after a moment the face of the child of many soldiers clouded. "But won't I have _any_ gun 'tall, Aunt Kate?" he asked wistfully.

She smiled at the stubborn persistence of militarism. "I'm afraid not, dear. I hope we're not going to have so many guns when you're a man. But, Worth, if you don't have the gun, other little boys will have more to eat. There are lots of little boys and girls in the world now haven't enough to eat just because there are so many guns. Wouldn't you rather do without the gun and know that nobody was going hungry?"

"I--guess so," faltered Worth, striving to be magnanimous but looking wistful.

"But, Aunt Kate," he pursued after another silence, "what's father making guns for--if there aren't going to be any?"

Katie's smile was not one Worth would be likely to get much from. "Ask father," she said rather grimly. "I think he might find the question interesting."

Worth continued solemn. "But, Aunt Kate--won't there be anybody 'tall to kill?"

"Why, honey," she laughed, "does it really seem to you such a gloomy world--world in which there will be nobody to kill? Don't worry, dear.

The world's getting so interesting we're going to find lots of things more fun than guns."

"Maybe," said Worth, "if I don't have a gun you'll get me an air-ship, Aunt Kate."

"Maybe so," she laughed.

"The man that mends the boats says I'll have an air-ship before I die, Aunt Kate."

She gave Worth a sudden little squeeze, curiously jubilant at the possibility of his having an air-ship before he died. And she viewed the city of sky-scrapers adoringly--tenderly--mistily. "Oh Worthie," she whispered, "isn't it _lovely_ to be getting home?"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

She found it difficult to adjust herself to the Ann who had luncheon with her the next day. The basis of their association had shifted and it had been too unique for it to be a simple matter to appear unconscious of the shifting.

She had not seen Ann since the day they said the cruel things to each other. Wayne had thought it best that way, saying that Ann must have no more emotional excitement. She had acquiesced the more readily as at the time she was not courting emotional excitement for herself.

And now the Ann sitting across the table from her was not the logical sequence of things experienced in last summer's search for Ann. She was not the sum of her thoughts about Ann--visioning through her, not the expression of the things Ann had opened up. It was hard, indeed, to think of her as in any sense related to them, at all suggestive of them.

An Ann radiating life rather than sorrowing for it was an Ann she did not know just what to do with.

And there was something disturbing in that rich glow of happiness. She did not believe that Ann's something somewhere could be stenography. Yet her radiance--the deep, warm quality of it--suggested nothing so much as a something somewhere attained. It seemed to Katie rather remarkable if the prospect of soon being able to earn her own living could make a girl's eyes as wonderful as that.

There was no mistaking her delight in seeing Katie and Worth. And a sense of the old relationship was there--deep and tender sense of it; but something had gone from it, or been added to it. It was not the all in all.

Truth was, Ann was more at home with her than she was with Ann.

After luncheon they went up to Katie's room for a little chat. Katie talked about stenography and soon came to be conscious of that being a vapid thing to be talking about.

"What pretty furs," she said, in the pause following the collapse of stenography.

That seemed to mean more. "Yes, aren't they lovely?" responded Ann, with happy enthusiasm. "They were my Christmas present--from Wayne."

The way Ann said Wayne--in the old days she had never said it at all--led instantly, though without her knowing by what path, to that strange fear of hers in finding Ann so free from fear.

Ann was blushing a little: the "Wayne" had slipped out so easily, and so prettily. "He thought I needed them. It's often so cold here, you know."

"Why certainly one needs furs," said Katie firmly, as if there could be no question as to _that_.

Katie's great refuge was activity. She got up and began taking some dresses from her trunk.

Then, just to show herself that she was not afraid, that there was nothing to be afraid about, she asked lightly: "What in the world brings Wayne up to New York so much?"

Ann was affectionately stroking her muff. She looked up at Katie shyly, but with a warm little smile. There was a pause which seemed to hover over it before she said softly: "Why, Katie, I think perhaps I bring him up to New York."

Everything in Katie seemed to tighten--close up. She gave her most cobwebby dress a perilous shake and said in flat voice: "Wayne's very kind, I'm sure."

Ann did not reply; she was still stroking her muff; that smile which hovered tenderly over something had not died on her lips. It made her mouth, her whole face, softly lovely. It did something else. Made it difficult for Katie to go on pretending with herself.

Though she made a last stand. It was a dreadful state of affairs, she told herself, if Ann had been so absurd as to fall in love with Wayne--_Wayne_--just because he had been kind in helping her get a start.

She followed that desperately. "Oh yes, Wayne's really very kind at heart. And then of course he's always been especially interested in you, because of me."

Ann looked up at her. The look kept deepening, sank far down beneath Katie's shallow pretense.

"Well, Katie," Ann began, with the gentle dignity of one whom life has taken into the fold, "as long as we seem into this, I'd rather go on.

Wayne said I was to do just as I liked about telling you. Just as it happened to come up. But I think you ought to know he is not interested in just the way you think." She paused before it, then said softly, with a tremulous pride: "He cares for me, Katie--and wants to marry me."

"He can't do that! He _can't do that_!"

It came quick and sharp. Quick and sharp as fire answering attack.

She sat down. The sharpness had gone and her voice was shaking as she said: "You certainly must know, Ann, that he can't do that."

So they faced each other--and the whole of it. It was all opened up now.

"It's very strange to me," Katie added hotly, "that you wouldn't know that."

It seemed impossible for Ann to speak; the attack had been too quick and too sharp; evidently, too unexpected.

"I told him so," she finally whispered. "Told and told him so. That you would feel--this way. That it--couldn't be. He said no. That you felt--all differently--after last summer. And I thought so, too. Your letters sounded that way."

Katie covered her eyes for a second. It was too much as if the things she was feeling differently about were the things she was losing.