The day came when the two women, with the little girls, stood on the porch of the house which had proved so ineffective a home.  Kate turned the key.

“I hope never to come back to Chicago, Kate,” Honora said, lifting her ravaged face toward the staring blankness of the windows.  “I’m not brave enough.”

“Not foolish enough, you mean,” corrected Kate.  “Hold tight to the girlies, Honora, and you’ll come out all right.”

Honora refrained from answering.  Her woe was epic, and she let her sunken eyes and haggard countenance speak for her.

Kate saw David Fulham’s deserted family off on the train.  Mrs. Hays, the children’s nurse, accompanied them.  Honora moved with a slow hauteur in her black gown, looking like a disenthroned queen, and as she walked down the train aisle Kate thought of Marie Antoinette.  There were plenty of friends, as both women knew, who would have been glad to give any encouragement their presence could have contributed, but it was generally understood that the truth of the situation was not to be recognized.

When Kate got back on the platform, Honora became just Honora again, thinking of and planning for others.  She thrust her head from the window.

“Oh, Kate,” she said, “I do hope you’ll get well settled somewhere and feel at home.  Don’t stay in that attic, dear.  It would make me feel as if I had put you into it.”

“Trust me!” Kate reassured her.  She waved her hand with specious gayety.  “Give my love to Mr. Wander,” she laughed.

XVIII

Kate was alone at last.  She had time to think.  There were still three days left of the vacation for which she had begged when she perceived Honora’s need of her, and these she spent in settling her room.  It would not accommodate all of the furniture she had accumulated during those days of enthusiasm over Ray McCrea’s return, so she sold the superfluous things.  Truth to tell, however, she kept the more decorative ones.  Honora’s fate had taught her an indelible lesson.  She saw clearly that happiness for women did not lie along the road of austerity.

Was it humiliating to have to acknowledge that women were desired for their beauty, their charm, for the air of opulence which they gave to an otherwise barren world?  Her mind cast back over the ages—­over the innumerable forms of seduction and subserviency which the instinct of women had induced them to assume, and she reddened to flame sitting alone in the twilight.  Yet, an hour later, still thinking of the subject, she realized that it was for men rather than for women that she had to blush.  Woman was what man had made her, she concluded.

Yet man was often better than woman—­more generous, more just, more high-minded, possessed of a deeper faith.

Well, well, it was at best a confusing world!  She seemed to be like a ship without a chart or a port of destination.  But at least she could accept things as they were—­even the fact that she herself was not “in commission,” and was, philosophically speaking, a derelict.