I found her doing something with test-tubes and bottles—­some experiment with carbohydrates, I think it was.  I watched her till she was through with it, then we talked.  That is the way one puts it, but as a matter of fact Katherine seldom does much of the talking; one talks to her.  She listens, and puts in from time to time some critical comment that often extraordinarily clears up any subject one is talking round.  She contributes as much as any one I know to the conversation, but in such condensed tabloids that it doesn’t take her long.  Most things don’t seem to her to be worth saying.  She’ll let, for instance, a chatterbox like Juke say a hundred words to her one, and still she’ll get most said, though Jukie’s not a vapid talker either.

‘Jane,’ she told me, ’is coming back next week.  The marriage is to be at the end of April.’

’A rapidity worthy of the Hustling Press.  Jukie will be sorry.  He hopes yet to wrest her as a brand from the burning.’

Katherine smiled at Juke’s characteristic sanguineness.

’Jukie won’t do that.  If Jane means to do a thing she does it.  Jane knows what she wants.’

‘And she wants Hobart?’ I pondered it, turning it over, still puzzled.

‘She wants Hobart,’ Katherine agreed.  ’And all that Hobart will let her in to.’

‘The Daily Haste?  The society of the Pinkerton journalists?’

’And of a number of other people.  Some of them fairly important people, you know.  The editor of the Daily Haste has to transact business with a good many notorious persons, no doubt.  That would amuse Jane.  She’s all for life.  I dare say the wife of the editor of the Haste has a pretty good front window for the show.  Jane likes playing about with people, as you like playing with ideas, and I with chemicals....  Besides, beauty counts with Jane.  It does with every one.  She’s probably fallen in love.’

That was all we said about it.  We talked for the rest of the evening about the Fact.

6

But when I went to Jane’s wedding, I understood about the ’number of other people’ that Hobart let Jane in to.  They had been married that afternoon by the Registrar, Jane having withstood the pressure of her parents, who preferred weddings to be in churches.  Hobart didn’t much care; he was, he said, a Presbyterian by upbringing, but sat loosely to it, and didn’t care for fussy weddings.  Jane frankly disbelieved in what she called ‘all that sort of thing.’  So they went before the Registrar, and gave a party in the evening at the Carlton.

We all went, even Juke, who had failed to snatch Jane from the burning.  I don’t know that it was a much queerer party than other wedding parties, which are apt to be an ill-assorted mixture of the bridegroom’s circle and the bride’s.  And, except for Jane’s own personal friends, these two circles largely overlapped in this case.  The room was full of journalists, important and unimportant,