way beside them, he and Katie assuming
conversational responsibilities. But Ann's smile warmed her aloofness,
and her very shyness seemed well adjusted to her fragility. "And just
fits in with what I told him!" gloated Kate. And though she said so
little, for some reason, perhaps because she looked so different, one got
the impression of her having said something unusual. She had a way of
listening which conveyed the impression she could say things worth
listening to--if she chose. One took her on faith.

He said to her at the last, with that direct boyish smile it seemed could
not frighten even a startled bird: "You think you are going to like it
here?" And Ann replied, slowly, a tremor in her voice, and a child's
earnestness and sweetness in it too: "I think it the most beautiful place
I ever saw in all my life."

At the simple enough words his face softened strangely. It was with
an odd gentleness he said he hoped they could all have some good
times together.

But, the moment conquered, things which it had called up swept in. The
whole of it seemed to rush in upon her.

She turned harshly upon Katie. "This is--ridiculous! I'm going away
to-night!"

"We will talk it over this evening," replied Kate quietly. "You will wait
for that, won't you? I have something to suggest. And in the end you will
be at liberty to do exactly as you think best. Certainly there can be no
question as to that."

On their way home they encountered the throng of men from the
shops--dirty, greasy, alien. It was not pleasant--meeting the men when
one was driving. And yet, though certainly distasteful, they interested
Katie, perhaps just because they were so different. She wondered how they
lived and what they talked about.

Chancing to look at Ann, she saw that stranger than the men was the look
with which Ann regarded them. She could not make it out. But one thing
she did see--the soft spring breezes had much yet to do.

CHAPTER VII

Wayne had gone over to Colonel Leonard's for bridge. Kate was to have
gone too, but had pleaded fatigue. The plea was not wholly hollow. The
last thirty hours had not been restful ones.

And now she was to go upstairs and do something which she did not know
how to do, or why she was doing. Sitting there alone in the library she
grew serious in the thought that a game was something more than a game
when played with human beings.

Not that seriousness robbed her of the charm that was her own. Th