n might laugh. It seemed to her sometimes that one could love and
hate Paris for every known reason, but in the end always love for the
full measure it gave. She stood for a moment looking at the spire of
Sainte Chapelle, slender as a fancy, yet standing out like a conviction;
watching the people on the busses, the gesticulating crowds--blockades of
emotion, the men on the Quai rummaging among the book-stalls for possible
treasures left by men who had loved it long before, looking at the thanks
in stone for yesterday's vision of to-morrow, and everywhere cabs--as
words carrying ideas--breathlessly bearing eager people from one vivid
point to another in the hurrying, highly-pitched, articulate city.

It interested her for a time, as things that were live always interested
Katie. The city's streets had always been for her as waves which bore her
joyously along. But after a time, perhaps just because she was so live,
it made her unbearably lonely.

The things they might do together in Paris! The things to see--to
talk about.

And still filled with her revolt against Clara's self-delusions, she
asked of herself how much the demand of her spirit to soar was prompted
by the hunger of her heart to love.

She could not say. She wondered how many of the world's people would be
able to say. How many of the spacious countries would have been gained
had men been fighting only for their philosophies, pushed only by the
beating of wings that would soar. But did that make the distances less
vast? Less to be desired? Though visioning be child of desiring--was the
vision less splendid, and was not the desire ennobled?

Her speculations were of such nature as to make her hurry home to see
whether there was American mail.

A certain letter which sometimes came to her was called "American mail."
All the rest of the American mail which reached Paris was privileged to
be classed with that letter.

Katie had come over in October with her Aunt Elizabeth, who felt the need
of recuperation from the bitter blow of her son's marriage. Katie, too,
felt the need of recuperation--she did not say from what, but from
something that made her intolerant of her aunt's form of distress. Her
aunt said that Katie was changing: growing unsympathetic, hard,
unfeminine. She thought it was because she did not marry. It would soften
her to care for some one, was the theory of her Aunt Elizabeth.

She had remained in order to be with Worth; and, too, becau