She walked over into Ann’s room—­room in which Ann had taken such pride and pleasure.  Ann had loved the things on the dressing-table, she had more than once seen her fairly caressing those pretty ivory things.  She wondered if Ann had anything resembling a dressing-table—­what she wore—­how she managed.

Those were the little worries about Ann forever haunting her, as they would a mother who had a child away from home.  New vision of the immensity of life could save her from giving destroying place to that sense of the woe of the world, but a conception of the wonders of the centuries could not keep out the gnawing fear that Ann might not be getting enough to eat.

There was a complexity in her mood of that night—­happiness and sadness so close as at times to be indistinguishable—­the whole of it making for a sense of the depth of life.

But their evening was constrained.  Katie blamed the dress for part of it, vexed with herself for having put it on.  She had wanted to be attractive—­not suggest the unattainable.

And that was what something seemed suggesting.  He appeared less ill at ease than morose.  Katie herself, after having been so happy in his coming, was, now that he was there, uncontrollably depressed.  They talked of a variety of things—­in the main, the things she had been reading—­but something had happened to that wonderful thing which had grown warm in their hearts as they walked those last two blocks.

Even the things of which they talked had lost their radiance.  What did it matter whether the universe was wonderful or not if the wonderful thing in one’s own heart was to be denied life?

From the first, it had been as if the things of which they talked were things sweeping them together, they were in the grip of the power and the wonder of those things, wrung by the tragedy of them, exalted by the hope—­in it all, by it all, united.  It was as if the whole sea of experience and emotion, suffering and aspiration, was driving, holding, them together.

So it had been all along.

But not tonight.  It was now—­or at least so it seemed to Katie—­as if those forces had let them go.  What had been as a great sea surging around their hearts was now just things to talk about.

It left her desolate.  And as she grew unhappy, she forced her gaiety and that seemed to put him the farther away.

The two different worlds had sent Ann away; was it, in a way she was unable to cope with, likewise to send him away?

Watts passed through the hall.  She saw him glance out at the soldier loweringly and after that he grew more morose, almost sullenly so.

It seemed foolish to talk of one’s being free when held by things one could not even see.

It was just when she was feeling so lonely and miserable she wished he would go that the telephone rang and central told her that Chicago was trying to get her.