But Worth, serene in the consciousness of having accomplished his mission, was sending Queen out after sticks and did not appear to have heard.

And suddenly, perhaps because the hot day had come to mean so much more than mere hot day, the feeling of being in a ridiculous position, together with that bristling sense of the need of a protective dignity, fell away.  It became one of those rare moments when real things matter more than things which supposedly should matter.  She looked at him to find him looking intently at her.  He was not at all slipshod as inspector.  “Why are you sorry for me?” she asked.  “What is there about me to pity?”

He smiled as he surveyed her, considering it.  Even people for whom smiling was difficult must have smiled at the idea of pitying Katie Jones—­Katie, who looked so much as if the world existed that she might have the world.

But he looked with a different premise and saw a deeper thing.  The world might exist for her enjoyment, but it eluded her understanding.  And that was beginning to encroach upon the enjoyment.

She seemed to follow, and her divination stirred a singular emotion, possibly a more turbulent emotion than Katie Jones had ever known.

“It’s all very well to pity me, but it’s not a genuine pity—­it’s a jeering one.  If you’re going to pity me, why don’t you do it sincerely instead of scoffingly?  Is it my fault that I don’t know anything about life?  What chance did I ever have to know anything real?  I wasn’t educated.  I was ‘accomplished.’  Oh, of course, if I had been a big person, a person with a real mind—­if I had had anything exceptional about me—­I would have stepped out.  But I’m nothing but the most ordinary sort of girl.  I haven’t any talents.  Nobody—­myself included—­can see any reason for my being any different from the people I’m associated with.  I was brought up in the army.  Army life isn’t real life.  It’s army life.  To an army man a girl is a girl, and what they mean by a girl has nothing to do with being a thinking being.  Then what business has a man like you—­I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing, but I believe you have some ideas about the real things of life—­tell me, please—­what business have you jeering at me?”

“I have no business jeering at you,” he said quickly, simply and strongly.

But Katie had changed.  He had a fancy that she would always be changing; that she was not one to rest in outlived emotions, that one mood was always but the making and enriching of another mood, moment ever flowing into moment, taking with it the heart of the moment that had gone.  “You are quite right to pity me,” she said, and tears surged beneath both eyes and voice.  “Whether scoffingly or genuinely—­you were quite right.  Feeling just enough to feel there is something—­but not a big enough feeling to go to that something, knowing just enough to know I’m being cheated, but without either the courage or the knowledge to do anything about it—­I’m surely a pitiable and laughable object.  Come, Worth,” she said sharply, “we’re going home.”