But Katie had no plans.  And suddenly she realized how completely all things had been changed by the coming of Ann.

She had spent much of her life in Washington.  She loved it; loved its official life, in particular its army and diplomatic life; and loved, too, that rigidly guarded old Washington to which, as her mother’s daughter, the door stood open to her.  Her uncle, the Bishop, lived in a city close by.  His home was the fixed spot which Katie called home.  In Washington—­and near it—­she would find friends on all sides.  Just thirty days before she would have gloated over that prospect of next season there.

But she was not prepared to bombard Washington with Ann.  The mere suggestion carried realization of how propitious things had been, how simple she had found it.

The little game they were playing seemed to cut Katie off from her life, too, and without leaving the luxury of feeling sorry for herself.  With it all, Washington did not greatly allure.  Washington, as she knew it, was distinctly things as they were; just now nothing allured half so much as those long dim paths of wondering leading off into the unknown.

Suddenly she had an odd sense of Washington—­all that it represented to her—­being the play, the game, the thing made to order and seeming very tame to her because she was dwelling with real things.  It was as if her craft of make-believe was the thing which had been able to carry her toward the shore of reality.

And so she told Wayne that she had no plans.  Perhaps she would go back to Europe with Ann.

He turned quickly at that.  “She goes back?”

“Oh yes—­I suppose so.”

“But why?  Where?  To whom?”

“Why?  Why, why not?  Why does one go anywhere?  Florence is to Ann what Washington is to me—­a sort of center.”

“Katie,” he asked abruptly, “has she no people?  No ties?  Isn’t she—­moored any place?”

“Am I ‘moored’ any place?” returned Kate.

“Why, yes; to the things that have made you—­to the things you’re part of.  By moored I don’t mean necessarily a fixed spot.  But I have a feeling—­”

He seemed either unable or unwilling to express it, and instead laughed:  “I’d like to know how much her father made a month, and whether her mother was a good cook—­a few little things like that to make her less a shadow.  Do you really get at her, Katie?”

“Why—­why, yes,” stammered Katie; “though I told you, Wayne, that Ann was different.  Quiet—­and just now, sad.”

“I don’t think of her as particularly quiet,” he replied; “and sad isn’t it, either.  I think of her”—­he paused and concluded uncertainly—­“as a girl in a dream.”

“Her dream or your dream, Wayne?” laughed Katie, just to turn it.

She was throwing sticks for the puppies and missed his startled look.

But it was Katie who was startled when he said, still uncertainly, and more to himself than to Katie:  “Though she’s so real.”