Katie looked about at so much of the world as her vision afforded:  Prosperous factories—­beautiful homes—­hundreds of other homes less beautiful, but comfortable looking—­some other very humble homes which yet looked habitable, the beautifully kept Government island in between the two cities, seeming to stand for something stable and unifying—­far away hills and a distant sky line—­a steamboat going through the splendid Government bridge, automobiles and carriages and farm wagons passing over that bridge—­this man who mended the boats, this young man so live that thoughts of life could change him as a sculptor can change his clay—­dear little Worth who was happily building a raft, the beautiful dog lying there drawing restoration from the breath of the water—­“But it doesn’t look as though it needed ‘saving,’” said Katie.

He shook his head.  “You’re looking at the framework.  Her eyes that day brought word from the inside.  To one knowing—­”

He broke off, looking at her as though seeing her from a new angle.

He thought it aloud.  “You’ve walked sunny paths, haven’t you?  You never had your soul twisted.  Life never tried to wring you out of shape.  And yet—­oh there’s quite a yet,” he finished more lightly.

“But you were telling me of Ann,” Katie felt she must say.

“Yes, and when I’ve finished telling you, you’ll go back to your sunny paths, won’t you?  Please don’t hurry me.  I can tell it better if I think I’m not being hurried.”

She smiled openly.  “I am in no hurry.”  There was a sunny rim trying all the while to pierce the somber thing which drew them together.  Little rays from the sunny paths would dart daringly in to the dark place from which Ann rose.

It made him wonder how far she of the sunny paths could penetrate an unlighted country.  He looked at her—­peered at her, fairly—­trying to decide.  But he could not decide.  Katie baffled him on that.

“I wonder,” he voiced it, “where it’s going to lead you?  I wonder if you’re prepared to go where it may lead you?  Have you thought of that?  Perhaps it’s going to take you into a country too dark for you of the sunny paths.  She may be called back.  You know we are called back to countries where we have—­established a residence.  You might have to go with her to settle a claim, or break a tie, or pull some one else out that she might not be pulled back in.  Then what?  Perhaps you might feel you needed a guide.  If so,”—­he went boldly to the edge of it, then halted, and concluded with a boyishly bashful humor—­“will you keep my application on file?”

Katie was not going to miss her chance of finding out something.  “I should want a guide who knew the territory,” she said.

“I qualify,” he replied shortly, with a short, unmirthful laugh.  “That is one advantage of not having spent one’s days on sunny paths.”  His voice on that was neither bashful nor boyish.

“But you must have spent some of them on sunny paths,” she urged, with more feeling than she would have been able to account for.  “You don’t look,” Katie added almost shyly, “as if you had grown in the dark.”