piece for that valuable work.

Ann had receded, flushed, her lip trembling a little; Wayne was looking
at her thoughtfully--and a little as one might look at the Madonna of the
Chair. Katie heard the trump of duty call her to another story.

CHAPTER X

Feeling that first efforts, even on life-preservers, should not be long
ones, it was soon after they returned to the library that Katie threw
out: "Well, Ann, if that letter must be written--"

Ann rose. "Yes, and it must."

"But morning is the time for letter writing," urged Wayne.

"Morning in this instance is the time for shopping," said Kate.

She had left Ann at the foot of the stairs, murmuring something about
having to see Nora. It was a half hour later that she looked in upon her.

What she saw was too much for Katie. Had the whole of creation been
wrecked by her laughing, Katie must needs have laughed just then.

For Ann's two hands gripped "Days in Florence" with fierce resolution.
Ann's head was bent over the book in a sort of stern frenzy. Ann, not
even having waited to disrobe, was attacking Florence as the good old
city had never been attacked before.

She seemed to get the significance of Katie's laugh, however, for it was
as to a confederate she whispered: "I'll get caught!"

"Trust me," said Kate, and laughed from a new angle.

Ann could laugh, too, and when Katie sat down to "talk it over" they
were that most intimate of all things in the world, two girls with a
secret, two girls set apart from all the world by that secret they held
from all the world, hugging between them a beautiful, brilliant secret
and laughing at the rest of the world because it couldn't get in. That
secret, shared and recognized and laughed over and loved, did what no
amount of sympathy or gratitude could have done. It was as if the whole
situation heaved a sigh of relief and settled itself in more
comfortable position.

"Why no," sparkled Kate, in response to Ann's protestation, "the only
thing you have to do is not to try. Lovers of Italy must take their Italy
with a superior calm. And when you don't know what to say--just seem too
full for utterance. That being too full for utterance throws such a safe
and lovely cover over the lack of utterance. And if you fear you're mixed
up just look as though you were going to cry. Wayne will be so terrified
at that prospect that he'll turn the conversation to air-ships, and
you'll always be safe with Wayne in an air-s