She would have to remain and explain Wayne, because she felt responsible about Wayne. It was her venturings had found what had led Wayne to venture--and, in the end, go. How could she outrage the army as long as Wayne had done so?

So it had seemed to Katie in her hurt and bewilderment. And the bewilderment came chiefly because of the hurt. It appalled her to find it did hurt like that.

But it was spring--and she knew that there were trees!

She paused and watched a gardener removing some debris that had covered a flower bed. It was spring, and there were new shoots and this gardener was wise and tender in taking the old things away, that the new shoots might have air. Katie could see them there--and tender green of them, as he lifted the old things away that the growing things might come through.

The gardener did not seem to feel he was cruel in taking the dead things away. As a good gardener, he would scout the idea of its being unkind to take them away just because they had been there so long. What did that matter, the wise gardener would scornfully demand, when there were growing things underneath pushing their way to the light?

And if he were given to philosophizing he might say that the kindest thing even to the dead things was to let the new things come through.

Thus life would be kept, and all the life that had ever been upon the earth perpetuated, vindicated, glorified.

It seemed to Katie that what life needed was a saner gardener. Not a gardener who would smother new shoots with a lot of dead things telling how shoots should go.

She drew a deep breath, lifted her face to the sky, and _knew_. Knew that she herself had power to push through the dead things seeking to smother her. Knew that if she but pushed on they must fall away because it was life was pushing them away.

She walked on slowly, breathing deep.

And swinging along in the April twilight she had a sense of having already set her face toward a more spacious country. And of knowing that it had been inevitable all the time that she should go. The delay had been but the moment's panic. Her life itself mattered more than what any group of people thought about her life.

Spring!--and new life upon the earth. It was that life itself, not the philosophy men had formulated for or against it, was pushing the dead things away. It was not even arrested by the fear of displacing something.

She had held herself back for so long that in the very admission that she longed to see him there was joy approaching the sweetness of seeing him.

A long time she walked in the April twilight--knowing that it was spring--and that there was new life upon the earth.

Harry Prescott would be married within two weeks. It seemed nothing was so important as that she witness that ceremony. Dear Harry Prescott, who would be married on the banks of the Mississippi, close by a certain place where boats were mended.

CHAPTER XLI

It was hard for Katie to contain her delight in Wayne's generosity when she found he had left his launch with Captain Prescott. "Now wasn't that just sweet of father?" she exulted to Worth as they walked together down to the little boat house.

Worth was more dispassionate. "Y--es; but why wouldn't he, Aunt Kate?

Where would he take it?"

"Well, but it's just so nice, dearie, that it's here."

"You going out in it?" he demanded.

Katie looked around. Some soldiers and some golfers in the distance, but like the day Ann had come upon the Island, no one within immediate range.

"Watts says she's running like a bird, Aunt Kate. Somebody was out this morning and somebody's going again this afternoon."

"Maybe she won't be here for them to take!"

"You going to take it, Aunt Kate?" he pressed excitedly.

"Well, I don't just _know_, Worth." She looked up the river. She could see a part of the little island where she had once pulled in to ask about the underlying principles of life, but not being able to see the other side of it, how could she be sure whether a launch ride was what she wanted or not?

"Father says we mustn't go in it alone, Aunt Kate. Shall I see if we can get Watts?"

"N--o; that's not exactly the idea," said Aunt Kate, stepping into the launch.

"Goin', Aunt Kate?"

"Why--I don't know. I thought I'd just _sit_ in it a little while."

So Worth joined her for the delightful pastime of just sitting in it for a little while.

"I'd rather like to find out whether it's in good condition." She turned to Worth appealing. "It seems we ought to be able to tell father whether they're taking good care of it, doesn't it, Worth?"

"I guess I'll go and get Watts."

"I don't know why, but I don't seem able to get up a great deal of enthusiasm for that idea." Her fingers were upon the steering wheel, longingly. Eyes, too, were longing. Suddenly she started the engine.

"We'll just run round the head of the Island," she said.

So they started up the river--the river as blue and lovely as it had been that day a year before when she had cheated it, and had begun to see that life was cheating her.

"Worth," she asked, "what is there on the _other_ side of that little island?"

"Why, Aunt Kate--why on the other side of it is the man that mends the boats."

"Oh, that so? Funny I never thought of that.

"But I suppose," she began again, "he wouldn't be very likely to be there mending boats now?"

"Why yes, Aunt Kate, he might be."

"You heard anything about him, Worth?"

"Yes sir; Watts says he has cut him _out_. He says he's _on_ to him."

"That must be a bitter blow," said Aunt Kate. "Watts getting _on_ to one--and cutting one out.

"Watts say anything about whether he was still mending boats?" she asked in the off-hand manner people adopt for vital things.

"Why I guess he is, 'cause he made a speech last week--oh there was a whole _lot_ of men--and he just _sowed seeds of discontentment_."

"Such a busy little sower!" murmured Aunt Kate lovingly.

She knew that he was there, or at least had been there the week before, for just as she was leaving her uncle's she had received a note from him.

They had not been writing to each other since the brief letter she had sent him the day after receiving the announcement of her brother's engagement. This note had been written to tell her no special thing; simply because, he said, after trying his best for a number of weeks, he was not longer able to keep from writing. He wrote because he couldn't help it. He had determined to love her too well to urge her to do what, knowing it all, she evidently felt could not hold happiness for her. But the utter desolation of life without her had crumbled the foundation of that determination.

In the note he said that his boat-mending days were about over.

They would not have lasted that long only he had had no heart for other things.

But the letter gave Katie heart for other things! Its unmistakable wretchedness made her superbly radiant.