d any one claim to have a solution for the
whole question of living?

She seemed passing into a country too big and too dark for her of the
sunny paths. She needed a guide. She grew lonely at thought of how badly
she needed her guide.

She turned for comfort to thought of the things she would do for Ann. She
would pay it back in revealing to Ann the beauty of the world. She would
assume the responsibility of the Something Somewhere. Perhaps in
fulfilling a dream she would find a key to reality.

She found pleasure in the vision of Ann in the old world cathedrals. How
wisely they had builded--builders of those old cathedrals--in expressing
religion through beauty. At peace in the beauty of form, might Ann not
find an inner beauty? She believed Ann's nature to be an intensely
religious one. How might Ann's soul not flower when she at last saw God
as a God of beauty?

Thus she soothed herself in building a future for Ann. Sought to appease
those surgings of life with promise that Ann should at last find the
loveliness of life.

But in the end it led to a terrifying vision. A vision of thousands upon
thousands of other dreamers of dreams whose soul stuff might be slowly
ebbing away in long dreary days of putting suspenders in boxes. Of
thousands of other girls who might be growing faint in operating the
wires for life. Oh, she had power to fill Ann's life--but would that have
power to still for her the mocking whispers from the dreams which had
died slow deaths in all the other barren lives? Even though she took Ann
from the crowd to a far green hill of happiness, would not Katie herself
see from that far green hill all the other girls "called" to life, going
forth as pilgrims with the lovely love-longing in their hearts only to
find life waiting to seize them for the work of the woman who wore the
white furs?

A sob shook Katie. The woe of the world seemed surging just beneath
her--rising so high that it threatened to suck her in.

But because she was a fighter she mastered the sob and vowed that rather
than be sucked in to the woe of the world she would find out about the
world. Certainly she would sit apart no longer. She would study. She
would see. She would live.

Life had become a sterner and a bigger thing. She would meet it in
a sterner and bigger way. To understand! That was the greatest
thing in life.

That passion to understand grew big within her. How could she hope to go
laughing through a world whi