hat she was glad all
her friends were getting on so famously.

Though if Zelda persisted, she would have to go West earlier than she had
planned. She could not regard Ann's sister-in-law as suitable person for
attendant at Major Darrett's wedding. That would be a little _too_ much
like playing the clown at a masked ball.

The image was suggested by seeing one of those grotesque figures across
the street. He was advertising some approaching festivity. With the clown
was a monkey. He put the monkey down on the sidewalk and it danced
obediently in just the place where it was put down.

Suddenly it seemed to Katie that she was for all the world like that
monkey--dancing obediently in the place where she was put down, not
asking about the before or after, just dutifully being gay. That monkey
did not know the great story about monkeys; doubtless he was even too
degraded by clowns to yearn for a tree. He only danced at the end of the
string the clown held--all else shut out.

She--shutting out the before and after--was that pathetically festive
little monkey; and society was the clown holding the string--the whole of
it advertising the tawdry thing the clown called life.

Only _she_ knew that there were trees. She had danced frantically in
seeking to forget them, but the string pulled by the clown fretted her
more and more.

She could not make clear to herself why it had seemed that if Wayne were
to be "free," she could not be; it was as if all the things she had
worked out for herself had been appropriated by her brother. Everybody
could not go into more spacious countries! There were some who must stay
behind and make it right for the deserters.

Wayne's marrying Ann had turned her back to familiar paths. It had
terrified her. There seemed too much involved, too little certainty as to
where one would find one's self if one left the well-known ways.

She had been put in the position of the one hurt just when she had been
steeled to bring the hurt. It gave her a new sense of the
hurts--uncertainty as to the right to deal them.

And probably no monkey would dance more obediently than the monkey
who had run away and been frightened at a glimpse of the vastness of
the forest.

She would have to remain and explain Wayne, because she felt responsible
about Wayne. It was her venturings had found what had led Wayne to
venture--and, in the end, go. How could she outrage the army as long as
Wayne had done so?

So it had