His short, curt laugh did not reveal his mood.  It was scoffing—­contemptuous—­but she could not tell at what it scoffed.  He had not turned toward her.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.  “Ann will be sorry.  She’s so—­”

He turned upon her hotly.  “Katie, quit lying to me.  I know there’s something you’re not telling.  I’ve suspected it for some time.  Now don’t get off any of that ‘nervous trouble’ talk to me!”

She stood there dumbly.

It seemed to enrage him.  “Why don’t you go and look after her!  What do you mean by leaving her all alone?”

So she went to look after her.

Ann looked like one who needed looking after.  Her eyes were intolerably bright.  It seemed the heat behind them must put them out.

She was walking about the room, walking as if something were behind her with a lash.

“You see, Katie,” she began, not pausing in the walking—­her voice, too, as though a whip were behind it—­“it was just as I told you.  It was just as I tried to tell you.  There are two worlds.  There’s no use trying to put me in yours.  See what I bring you!  See what you get for it!  See what—­”

She stood still, rocking back and forth as she stood there.  “It was too much for me to hear her talking about God! That was a little too much! My father was a minister!” And Ann laughed.

A minister was one thing Katie had not thought of.  Even in that moment she was conscious of relief.  Certainly the ministry was respectable.

But why should it be “too much” for the daughter of a minister to hear anything about God?

“Ann,” she began quietly, “I don’t want to force anything.  If you want to be alone I’ll even take my things and sleep somewhere else.  But, Ann, dear, if you could tell me a little I wouldn’t be so much in the dark; I could do better for us both.”

Ann did not seem to notice what she was saying.  “She was tired of things!  She was tired of things!  Tired of hanging her hat on the same kind of peg!  Why it’s awful—­it’s awful, I tell you—­to always be hanging your hat on the same kind of peg!

“She was tired of not having any fun!  Oh so tired of not having any fun!  Why you don’t care what you do when you get tired of not having any fun!

“Then people laugh—­the people who have all the fun.  Oh they think it’s so funny!—­the people who don’t have to hang their hats on any kind of peg.  So trivial.  So—­what’s that nervous word?  Katie—­you’re not like the rest of them!  Why, you seem to know—­just know without knowing.”

“But it’s hard for me,” suggested Katie.  “Trying to know—­and not knowing.”

Ann was still walking about the room.  “I was brought up in a little town in Indiana.  You see I’m going to tell you.  I’ve got to be doing something—­and it may as well be talking.  Now how did I start?  Oh yes—­I was brought up in a little town in Indiana.  Until three years ago, that was where I lived.  Were you ever in a little town in Indiana?”