Why?

And just then, as if it were a live and demanding thing, her eyes fell
on Northrup's last book. She scowled at it. It was a horrible book.
All about dirty, smudgy people that you couldn't forget and who kept
springing out on you in the most unexpected places. At dinners and
luncheons they often wedged in with their awful eyes fixed on your
plate and made you choke. They probably were not true. And those
things Brace said! Besides, if they were true, people like that were
used to them--they had never known anything else!

And then Brace had said some terrible things about war; that war going
on over the sea. Of course, no one expected to have a war, but it was
unpatriotic for any one to say what Brace had about those perfectly
dear officers at West Point and--what was it he said?--oh, yes--having
the blood of the young on one's soul and settling horrid things, like
money and land, with lives.

At this Kathryn tossed the book aside and it fell at Anna's feet. She
picked it up and handled it as if it were a tender baby that had
bumped its nose.

"It must be perfectly wonderful," she said, smoothing the book, "to
have an autographed copy of a novel. It's like having a lock of
someone's hair. Where _is_ Brace, Kathryn?"

This was unfortunate.

"That is my business and his!" Kathryn spoke slowly. Her eyes slanted
and her lips hardened.

"My darling, I beg your pardon!" And once more Anna Morris was shoved
into the groove where she belonged.

Later that day, after the luncheon with Sandy--Anna had been
eliminated by a master stroke that reduced her to tears and left Sandy
a victim to Kathryn's wiles--Kathryn called upon Helen Northrup.

She was told by the smiling little maid to go up into the Workshop.
This room was a pitiful attempt to lure Brace to work at home; in his
absence Helen sat there and scribbled. She wrote feeble little verses
with a suggestion of the real thing in them. Sometimes they got
published because the suggestion caught the attention of a sympathetic
publisher, and these small recognitions kept alive a spark that was
all but extinguished when Helen Northrup chose, as women of her time
did, a profession or--the woman's legitimate sphere!

There had been no regret in Helen's soul for whatever part she played
in her own life--her son was her recompense for any disappointment she
might have met, and he was, she devoutly believed, her interpreter.
She loved to think in her quiet hours that