In such wise she rambled on as a bewildered but unresisting girl surrendered herself to her wiles and hands.

When Katie returned from a call to the telephone it was to find Ann rubbing her hand over a pretty ankle adorned with the most silky of silken hose.  “Likes them,” Katie made of it, at sight of the down-turned face; “always wanted them—­maybe never had them.  Moral—­If you want people to believe in you, give them something they don’t need, but would like to have.”

She did her hair for her, chatting all the while about ways of doing hair, exclaiming about the beauty of Ann’s and planning things she was going to do with it.  “Were I as proud of all my works as I am of this, I might be a more self-respecting person,” she said, finally passing Ann the hand mirror as if the girl’s one concern in life was to see whether she approved of the plaiting of those soft glossy braids.

And unmistakably she did approve.  “It does look nice this way, doesn’t it?” she agreed, looking up at Katie with a shy eagerness.

When at last Ann had been made ready, when Katie had slipped on the long loosely fitted white coat, had adjusted the big veil with just the right touch of sophisticated carelessness, as she surveyed the work of her hands her excitement could with difficulty contain itself.  “She is Ann,” she gloated.  “Her father was a great artist.  Her mother simply couldn’t be anything but a great musician.  And she’s lived all her life in—­Italy, I think it is.  Oh—­I know!  She’s from Florence.  Why she couldn’t be any place but from Florence—­and she doesn’t know anything about bridge and scandal and pay and promotion—­but she knows all about dreaming dreams and seeing visions.  She’s lived a life apart—­aloof—­looking at great pictures and hearing great music.  Of course, she’s a little shy with us—­she doesn’t understand our roistering ways—­that’s part of her being Ann.”

But when she came back after getting her own things, Ann had gone.  The girl in white was still sitting there in the chair, but she was not at all Ann.  Things not from Florence, other things than dreams and visions and great pictures and music had taken hold of her.  Frightened and disorganized again, she was huddled in the chair, and as Katie stood in the doorway she said not a word, but shook her head, and the eyes told all.

Katie bent over the chair.  “It’s all ‘up to me,’” she said quietly.  “Don’t you see that it is?  You haven’t a thing in the world to do but follow my lead.  Won’t you trust me enough to know that you will not be asked to do anything that would be too hard?  Believe in me enough to feel I will put through anything I begin?  Isn’t it rather—­oh, unthrifty, to let pasts and futures spoil presents?  Some time soon we may want to talk of the future, but just now there’s only the present.  And not a very terrifying present.  Nothing more fearful than winding in and out of the wooded roads of this beautiful place—­listening to birds and—­but come—­” changing briskly to the practical and helping her rise as though dismissing the question—­“I hear our horse.”