Thoughts and smoke seemed circling around Wayne together; and perhaps the blue rim of it all was dreams.  His face was not what one would expect the face of a man engaged in making warfare more deadly to be as he murmured, not to Katie but to the thin outer rim, softly, as to rims barely material:  “And more than that—­a woman.”

He puzzled her.  “Well, Wayne,” she laughed, “aren’t you getting a little—­cryptic?  I certainly told you—­by implication—­that she was both a lady and a woman.  Then why this air of discovery?”

But it did not get Katie into the smoke.  He made no effort to get her in, but after a moment came back to her with a kindly:  “I am glad you have such a friend, Katie.  It will do you good.”

That inward chuckle showed no disposition to dissolve into anything; it fought hard to be just a live, healthy chuckle.

Moved by an impulse half serious, half mischievous she asked:  “You would say then, Wayne, that Ann seems to you more of a lady than Zelda Fraser?”

Wayne’s real answer lay in his look of disgust.  He did condescend to put into words:  “Oh, don’t be absurd, Katie.”

“But Zelda has a splendid ancestry,” she pressed.

“And suggests a chorus girl.”

That stilled her.  It left her things to think about.

At last she asked:  “And Wayne, which would you say I was?”

He came back from a considerable distance.  “Which of what?”

“Lady or chorus girl?”

He looked at her and smiled.  Katie was all aglow with the daring of her adventure.  “I should say, Katie dear, that you were a half-breed.”

“What a sounding thing to be!  But Major Darrett in his last letter tells me I am his idea of a thoroughbred.  How can I be a half-breed if I’m a thoroughbred?”

“True, it makes you a biological freak.  But you should be too original to complain of that.”

“But I do complain.  It sounds like something with three legs.  Not but what I’d rather be a biological freak than a grind—­or a prude.”

“Be at peace,” drily advised Wayne.

“Ann was quiet to-night,” mused Katie, feeling an irresistible desire to get back to her post of duty, not because there was any need for her being there, but merely because she liked the post.  “She felt a little strange, I think.  She has been much alone and with people of a different sort.”

“And I presume it never occurred to you, Katie, that neither Ann nor I was fairly surfeited with opportunities for conversational initiative?  Just drop me a hint sometime when you are not going to be at home, will you?  I should like a chance to get acquainted with your friend.”

Katie was straightway the hen with feathers ruffled over her brood.  “You must be careful, Wayne,” she clucked at him.  “When you are alone with Ann please try to avoid all unpleasant subjects, or anything you see she would rather not talk about.”