was just a mistake of yours. We'll fix it up. Don't
cry." And he put an arm about her.

She stood before him with clenched hands, eyes blazing. "Don't touch me!
Don't you touch me!" And she left him.

In the hall Nora stopped her to say there were not enough champagne
glasses. She made no reply. Champagne glasses--!

She looked after Worth. Then she went to Ann.

"Well, Ann," she began, her voice high pitched and unsteady, "this is
about the limit, isn't it?"

"Oh Katie," moaned Ann, "you told me--you told me--you understood. Why,
Katie--you must have known there was some one."

"Oh I knew there was some one, all right," said Katie, her voice getting
higher and higher, her cheeks more and more red--"only I just hadn't
figured, you see, on its being some one I knew! Why how under the sun,"
she asked, laughing wildly, "did you ever meet Major Darrett?"

"I--I'll try to tell you," faltered Ann miserably. "I want to. I want to
make you understand. Katie!--I'll die if you don't understand!"

She looked so utterly wretched that Katie made heroic effort to get
herself under control--curb that fearful desire to laugh. "I will try,"
she said quietly as she could. "I _will_ try."

"Why, Katie," Ann began, "does it make so much difference--just because
you know him?"

"It makes all the difference! Can't you see--why it makes it so vulgar."

Ann threw back her head. "Just the same--it wasn't vulgar. What I felt
wasn't vulgar. Why, Katie," she cried appealingly, "it was my Something
Somewhere! You didn't think that vulgar!"

"Oh no," laughed Katie, "not before I knew it was Major Darrett! But tell
me--I've got to know now. What is it? Where did you meet him? Just how
bad is it, anyhow?"

It must have been desperation led Ann to spare neither Katie nor herself.
"I met him," she said baldly, "one night as I was standing on the corner
waiting for a car. He had an automobile. He asked me to get in it--and I
did. And that--began it."

Katie stepped back from her in horror, the outrage she felt stamped all
too plainly on her face. "And you call _that_ not vulgar? Why it was
_common_. It was _low_."

Then Ann turned. "Was it? Oh I don't know that you need talk. I wouldn't
say much--if I were you. I guess I saw the look on his face when I came
in. Don't think for a minute I don't know that look. _You got it there_.
And let me tell you another thing. Just let me tell you another thing!
Whatever I did--whatever I did--I know