Katie smiled and agreed that it might get him a more comfortable wife.

The son himself she tried to avoid.  That thing which had tried to shape itself between her and Ann still remained there, a thing without body but vaguely outlined between Ann and all other things.

They had not drawn any nearer to it.  They let the story rest at the place where all of life had not been going over the wire.

And Katie told herself that she understood.  That Ann was to be judged by the Something Somewhere she had formed in her heart rather than by whatever it was life had tardily and ungenerously and unwisely brought her.

That Ann might still cling to a Something Somewhere—­a thing for which even yet she would keep the heart right—­was suggested that afternoon when Katie told her of Captain Prescott.

She had not meant to tell her.  She tried to think she was doing it in order to know how to meet Harry, but had to admit finally that she did it for no nobler reason than to see how Ann would take it.

She took it most unexpectedly.  “I am sorry,” she said simply, “but I do not care at all for Captain Prescott.  I—­” She paused, coloring slightly as she said with a little laugh:  “We all like to be liked, don’t we, Katie?  And with me—­well it meant something just to know I could be liked—­in that nice kind of way.  It helped.  But that’s all—­so I hope he doesn’t care very much for me.  Though if he does,” concluded Ann sagely, “he’ll get over it.  He’s not the caring sort.”

The words had a familiar sound; after a moment she remembered them as what he had said that night of the “Don’t You Care” girls.

While she would have been panic-stricken at finding Ann interested, she was more discomfited than relieved at not finding her more impressed.  “To marry into the army, Ann,” she said, “is considered very advantageous.”

Ann was lying there with her face pillowed upon her hand.  She turned her large eyes, about which just then there were large circles, seriously, it would even seem rebukingly, upon Katie.  “If I ever should marry,” she said, “it will be for some other reason than because it is ‘advantageous.’”

Katie felt both rebuked and startled.  Most of the girls she knew—­girls who had never worked in factories or restaurants or telephone offices, or had never thought of taking their own lives, had not scorned to look upon marriages as advantageous.

Nor, for that matter, had Katie herself.

Ann’s superior attitude toward marriage turned Katie to religion.  As the niece of a bishop she was moved to set Ann right on things within a bishop’s domain.  And underlying that was an impulse to set her right with herself.

“Ann,” she said, “if somebody said to you, ’I starve you in the name of Katie Jones,’ wouldn’t you say, ’Oh no you don’t.  Starve me if you want to, but don’t tell me you do it in the name of Katie Jones.  She doesn’t want people starved!’”