se there
seemed nothing to go back to. Mrs. Prescott had come over to be for a
time with a niece who was studying music, and she and Katie were
together. Now the older woman was beginning to talk of wanting to go
back; she was getting letters from Harry which made her want to see him.
The letters sounded as though he were in love again.

And Katie was getting letters herself, letters to make her want to see
the writer thereof. They, too, sounded as if written by one in love. With
things as regards Worth adjusted, Katie would be free to go with her
friend, and she was homesick. At least that was the non-committal name
she gave to something that was tugging at her heart.

But--go home to what? For what?

Her vision had not grown any clearer. It was only that the "homesickness"
was growing more acute.

And that night's mail did not fill her with a yearning to become an
expatriate.

In addition to the "American mail" there was a letter from Ann. That
evening after Worth was asleep and Mrs. Prescott had gone to her room,
Katie reread both letters, and a number of others, and thought about a
number of things.

Wayne had undertaken the supervision of Ann. In his first letter, that
unsatisfactory letter in which he gave so few details about finding Ann,
he had said quite high-handedly that he was going to look after things
himself. "I think, Katie," he wrote, "that with the best of intentions,
your method was at fault. I can see how it all came about, but it is not
the way to go on. It was too unreal. The time of make-believe is over.
Ann is a real person and should work out her life in a real way, her own
way, not following your fancyings. She must be helped until she gets
stronger and more prepared. You've had the thing come too tragically to
you to see it just right, so I'm going to step in and I want you to leave
things to me."

So Wayne had "stepped in" and was lending Ann the money to study
stenography. Katie had made a wry face over stenography, which did not
have a dream-like or an Ann-like sound--but a very Wayne-like one!--but
had entered no protest; at that time she had been too dumbly miserable to
enter protest about anything.

Wayne seemed to her curt and rather unfeeling about the whole thing,
insisting, somewhat indelicately, she thought, on the point that Ann be
prepared to earn her own living and that there be no more nonsense about
her. She hoped he was kinder with Ann than he sounded in his letters