When Kate could spare the money, she bought flowers for Marna—­for it was flower-time with Marna, and she had seen the Angel of the Annunciation.  All that was Celtic in her was coming uppermost.  She dreamed and brooded and heard voices.  Kate liked to sit in the little West-Side flat and be comforted of the happiness there.  She was feeling very absurd herself, and she was ashamed of her excursion into the realms of feminine folly.  That was the way she put her defection from “common sense,” and her little flare of sentiment for Ray, and all her breathless, ridiculous preparation for him.  She had never worn the chrysanthemum dress, and she so loathed the sight of it that she boxed it and put it in the bottom of her trunk.

No word came from Ray.  “Sometime” had not materialized and he had failed to call.  His name was much in the papers as “best man” or cotillion leader or host at club dinners.  He moved in a world of which Kate saw nothing—­a rather competitive world, where money counted and where there was a brisk exchange of social amenities.  Kate’s festivities consisted of settlement dinners and tea here and there, at odd, interesting places with fellow “welfare workers”; and now and then she went with Honora to some University affair.  A great many ladies sent her cards to their “afternoons”—­ladies whom she met at the home of the President of the University, or with whom she came in contact at Hull House or some of the other settlements.  But such diversions she was obliged to deny herself.  They would have taken time from her too-busy hours; and she had not the strength to do her work according to her conscience, and then to drag herself halfway across town, merely for the amiability of making her bow and eating an ice in a charming house.  Not but that she enjoyed the atmosphere of luxury—­the elusive sense of opulence given her by the flowers, the distant music, the smiling, luxurious, complimentary women, the contrast between the glow within and the chill of twilight without—­twilight sparkling with the lights of the waiting motors, and the glittering procession on the Drive.  But, after all, while others rode, she walked, and sometimes she was very weary.  To be sure, she was too gallant, too much at ease in her entertaining world, too expectant of the future, to fret even for a moment about the fact that she was walking while others rode.  She hardly gave it a thought.  But her disadvantages made her unable to cope with other women socially.  She was, as she often said, fond of playing a game; but the social game pushed the point of achievement a trifle too far.

Moreover, there was the mere bother of “dressing the part.”  Her handsome heavy shoes, her strong, fashionable street gloves, her well-cared-for street frock, and becoming, practical hat she could obtain and maintain in freshness.  She was “well-groomed” and made a sort of point of looking competent, as if she felt mistress of herself and her circumstances; she could even make herself dainty for a little dinner, but the silks and furs, the prodigality of yard-long gloves, the fetching boots and whimsical jewels of the ladies who made a fine art of feminine entertainments, were quite beyond her.  So, sensibly, she counted it all out.