Another difficulty had arisen to make distasteful the Pierce hospitality.  Kathleen Pierce, in a fit of depression foreign to her usually blithe and easy-going nature, had become confidential and had blurted out certain truths which threw a new and, to Esme, disconcerting light upon the episode of the motor accident.  In her first appeal to Esme, it now appeared, the girl had been decidedly less than frank.  Therefore, in her own judgment of Hal and the “Clarion,” Esme had been decidedly less than just.  In her resentment, Esme had almost quarreled with her friend.  Common honesty, she pointed out, required a statement to Harrington Surtaine upon the point.  Would Kathleen write such a letter?  No!  Kathleen would not.  In fact, Kathleen would be d-a-m-n-e-d, darned, if she would.  Very well; then it remained only (this rather loftily) for Esme herself to explain to Mr. Surtaine.  Later, she decided to explain by word of mouth.  This would involve her return to Worthington, which she had come to long for.  She had become sensible of a species of homesickness.

In some ill-defined way Harrington Surtaine was involved in that nostalgia.  Not that she had any desire to see him!  But she felt a certain justifiable curiosity—­she was satisfied that it was justifiable—­to know what he was doing with the “Clarion,” since her established sphere of influence had ceased to be influential.  Was he really as unyielding in other tests of principle as he had shown himself with her?  Already she had altered her attitude to the extent of admitting that it was principle, even though mistaken.  Esme had been subscribing to the “Clarion,” and studying it; also she had written, withal rather guardedly, to sundry people who might throw light on the subject; to her uncle, to Dr. Hugh Merritt, her old and loyal friend largely by virtue of being one of the few young men of the place who never had been in love with her (he had other preoccupations), to young Denton the reporter, who was a sort of cousin, and to Mrs. Festus Willard, who, alone of the correspondents, suspected the underlying motive.  From these sundry informants she garnered diverse opinions; the sum and substance of which was that, on the whole, Hal was fighting the good fight and with some success.  Thereupon Esme hated him harder than before—­and with considerably more difficulty.

On a late May day she had slipped quietly back into Worthington.  That small portion of the populace which constituted Worthington society was ready to welcome her joyously.  But she had no wish to be joyously welcomed.  She didn’t feel particularly joyous, herself.  And society meant going to places where she would undoubtedly meet Will Douglas and would probably not meet Hal Surtaine.  Esme confessed to herself that Douglas was rather on her conscience, a fact which, in itself, marked some change of nature in the Great American Pumess.  She decided that society was a bore.  For refuge she turned to her interest in the slums, where the Reverend Norman Hale, for whom she had a healthy, honest respect and liking, was, so she learned, finding his hands rather more than full.  Always an enthusiast in her pursuits, she now threw herself into this to the total exclusion of all other interests.