“All right,” said Katie.  “It’s all right.  Just go lie down.  I’ll look after Worth—­and you—­in a minute.”

Ann left the room and Katie turned to the Major.  “Well?”

“You’re so sensible, Katie,” he said hurriedly, “in feeling the thing to do is make no fuss about things.  Nothing is to be gained—­But for God’s sake, Katie, what is she doing here?  Where did you know her?”

“Oh you tell first,” said Katie, smiling a hard smile.  “You tell where you found her, then I’ll tell where I found her.”

“Really—­really,” he said stiffly, “I must refuse to discuss such a matter with you.  I can only repeat—­she has no business here.”

“Then pray why have you any business here?”

He flushed angrily.  But restrained himself and said persuasively:  “Why, Katie, she’s not one of us.”

“She’s one of me,” said Katie.  “She’s my friend.”

“I can only say again,” he said shortly, “that she has no business to be.”

“As I am to be kept so safe from the wicked world,” said Katie stingingly, “I presume it is not proper you discuss the matter with me.  I take it, however, that she was one of those ‘excursions’ into the great outer world?”

“Well,” he said defiantly, “and what if she was?  She was willing to be, I guess.  She wasn’t knocked down with a club.”

“Oh, no!  Oh, my no!  That wouldn’t be your method.  And when one is tired of exursions—­I suppose one is at perfect liberty to abandon them—?”

“Nonsense!  You can’t trump up anything of that sort.  She wasn’t ‘abandoned.’  She left in the night.”

He colored.  “I beg your pardon.  But as long as we’re speaking frankly—­”

“Oh pray,” said Katie, “let’s not be overly delicate in this delicate little matter!”

“Very well then.  Her coming was her own choice.  Her going away was her own choice.  I can see that I have no great responsibility in the matter.”

“Why how clever you must be,” said Katie, all the while smiling that hard smile, “to be able to argue it like that.”

He was standing there with folded arms.  “I think I was very decent to her.  All things considered—­in view of the nature of the affair—­I consider that I was very decent.”

Katie laughed.  “Maybe you were.  I found her in the very act of committing suicide.”

He paled, but quickly recovered himself.  “That was not my affair.  There must have been—­something afterward.”

“Maybe.  I’m sure I don’t know.  But you were the beginning, weren’t you?” Suddenly she buried her face in her hands.  “Oh I didn’t think—­I didn’t think it could get in here!  It’s everywhere!  It’s everywhere!  It’s getting me!”

“Katie—­dear Katie,” he murmured, “don’t.  We’ll get you out of this.  You wanted to be kind.  It was just a mistake of yours.  We’ll fix it up.  Don’t cry.”  And he put an arm about her.