f. "She _is_
Ann," she gloated. "Her father _was_ a great artist. Her mother simply
couldn't _be_ anything but a great musician. And she's lived all her life
in--Italy, I think it is. Oh--I know! She's from Florence. Why she
couldn't be any place but from Florence--and she doesn't know anything
about bridge and scandal and pay and promotion--but she knows all
about dreaming dreams and seeing visions. She's lived a life
apart--aloof--looking at great pictures and hearing great music. Of
course, she's a little shy with us--she doesn't understand our roistering
ways--that's part of her being Ann."

But when she came back after getting her own things, Ann had gone. The
girl in white was still sitting there in the chair, but she was not at
all Ann. Things not from Florence, other things than dreams and
visions and great pictures and music had taken hold of her. Frightened
and disorganized again, she was huddled in the chair, and as Katie
stood in the doorway she said not a word, but shook her head, and the
eyes told all.

Katie bent over the chair. "It's all 'up to me,'" she said quietly.
"Don't you see that it is? You haven't a thing in the world to do but
follow my lead. Won't you trust me enough to know that you will not be
asked to do anything that would be too hard? Believe in me enough to feel
I will put through anything I begin? Isn't it rather--oh, unthrifty, to
let pasts and futures spoil presents? Some time soon we may want to talk
of the future, but just now there's only the present. And not a very
terrifying present. Nothing more fearful than winding in and out of the
wooded roads of this beautiful place--listening to birds and--but
come--" changing briskly to the practical and helping her rise as though
dismissing the question--"I hear our horse."

"I see Miss Jones has got some of her swell friends visitin' her," a
soldier who was cutting grass remarked to a comrade newer to the service.
"Great swell--they tell me Miss Jones is. They say she's it in Washington
all right--way ahead of some that outranks her. Got outside money--their
own money. Handy, ain't it?" he laughed. "Though it ain't just the money,
either. Her mother was--well, somebody big--don't just recollect the
name. Friendly, Miss Jones is. Not like some, afraid you're going to
forget your place the minute she has a civil word with you. That one with
her is some swell from Washington or New York. You can tell that by the
looks of her, all right.