“Because I am so anxious you should like Ann, Wayne, and—­be nice to her.”

“Why?” Again it was that probing, provoking why.

“Because of what she means to me, I suppose.”

Something in her voice made him look at her differently.  “And what does she mean to you, Katie?”

“Ann is different from all the other girls I’ve known.  She means—­something different.”

“Strange I’ve never heard you speak of her.”

“I think you have, and have forgotten.  Though possibly not—­just because of the way I feel about her.”  She paused, seeking to express how she felt about her.  Unable to do so, she concluded simply:  “I have a very tender feeling for Ann.”

“I see you have,” he replied quietly.  He looked at her meditatively, and then asked, humorously but gently:  “Well Katie, what were you expecting me to do?  Order her out of the house?”

“But I want you to be more than civil, Wayne; I want you to be sympathetic.”

“I’ll be civil and you can bring Prescott on for the sympathetic,” he laughed.  “You know I haven’t great founts of sympathy gushing up in my heart for the jeune fille.”

“Ann’s not the jeune fille, Wayne.  She’s something far more interesting and worth while than that.”  She paused, again trying to get it, but could do no better than:  “I sometimes think of Ann as sitting a little apart, listening to beautiful music.”

He smiled.  “I can only reply to that, Katie, that I trust she is more inviting than your pictures of her.  A young woman who looked as though sitting apart listening to beautiful music should certainly be left sitting apart.”

“I’ll bring her down,” laughed Kate, rising; “then you can get your own picture.”

“I’ll be decent, Katie,” he called after her in laughing but reassuring voice.

The meeting had been accomplished.  Dinner had reached the salad, and all was well.  Yes, and a little more than well.

From the moment she stood in the doorway of Ann’s room and the girl rose at her suggestion of dinner, Katie’s courage had gone up.  Ann’s whole bearing told that she was on her mettle.  And what Katie found most reassuring was less the results of the effort Ann was making than her unmistakable sense of the necessity for making it.  There was hope in that.

Not that she suggested anything so hopeless as effort.  She suggested reserve feeling, and she was so beautiful—­so rare—­that the suggestion was of feeling more beautiful and rare than a determination to live up to the way she was gowned.  Her timidity was of a quality which seemed related to things of the spirit rather than to social embarrassment.  Jubilantly Kate saw that Ann meant to “put it over,” and her depth of feeling on the subject suggested a depth which in itself dismissed the subject.