She looked so like a child, and yet so lurkingly like a woman.  It gave him a new sense of Katie.  It blew the warm breath of life over an idea he had had when he came there.

He had just come from Zelda Fraser, having had luncheon at the Osbornes’.  He had once thought Zelda stimulating.  Now she did not seem at all stimulating in comparison with Katie.  She was too obvious.  That lurking something in Katie’s eyes, that mysterious smile she had, made Katie seem subtle.

If this were to be added to all her other charms—­

Katie had always seemed delightfully daring in an innocent sort of way.  It seemed now she might be capable of being subtle in a sophisticated way.  He had always thought of Katie as romping.  A distinguished and quite individual form of romping.  She even had a romping imagination.  He loved her for her merriness, for her open sunniness.  That had been an impersonal love, not very different from the way he might have loved a sister.  In fact he had more than once wished Katie were his little sister instead of Wayne’s.

He did not wish that now.

She became too fascinating and too desirable in her mysterious new complexity.  There was zest in discovering Katie after he had known her so long.

And her eyes and her smile seemed jeering at him for having been such a long while in discovering her.

He wanted to kiss her.  That mocking little smile seemed daring him to kiss her.  And yet he did not dare to.  It seemed part of Katie’s lovely new complexity that she could invite and forbid at one and the same time.

Now Zelda could not have done more than the inviting—­and so many could invite.

He rose and stood near her.  “Katie, you don’t mean to marry Prescott, do you?”

She clapped her hands above her head and laughed like a child immensely tickled about something.

He laughed, too, and then asked to be informed what he was laughing at.

“Oh, you’re just laughing because I am,” laughed Katie.

“Then may I ask, mysterious one, what you’re laughing at?”

“Oh I’m laughing at a tumble I once took.  ’Twas such a tumble.”

“I’d like to tumble to the tumble.”

“You would like it.  You’d love it.”

“I hadn’t thought,” said the Major, “that when I asked if you meant to marry Prescott I was classifying with the great humorists of all time.”

“And I hadn’t thought,” she returned, “that when I thought Prescott meant to marry me I was classifying with the great tumblers of all time!”

Suddenly she stopped laughing.  “No, I don’t mean to marry Harry, and I can further state with authority that Harry doesn’t mean to marry me.”

The laughter went from even her eyes—­thinking, perhaps, of whom Harry did mean to marry.

But she was not going to let herself become grave.  If she grew quiet she would know again about the woe of the world—­surging right underneath.  The only way not to know it was underneath was to keep merrily dancing away in one’s place on top of it.  She made a curious little gesture of flicking something from her hand and whistled a romping little tune.