She was definitely sorry to hear that they were to leave at nine that evening, and she clung to them as long as she could.  She took them to St. Mark’s for dinner.  Stooped, her elbows on the table, she heard with excitement that “Cy Bogart had the ’flu, but of course he was too gol-darn mean to die of it.”

“Will wrote me that Mr. Blausser has gone away.  How did he get on?”

“Fine!  Fine!  Great loss to the town.  There was a real public-spirited fellow, all right!”

She discovered that she now had no opinions whatever about Mr. Blausser, and she said sympathetically, “Will you keep up the town-boosting campaign?”

Harry fumbled, “Well, we’ve dropped it just temporarily, but—­sure you bet!  Say, did the doc write you about the luck B. J. Gougerling had hunting ducks down in Texas?”

When the news had been told and their enthusiasm had slackened she looked about and was proud to be able to point out a senator, to explain the cleverness of the canopied garden.  She fancied that a man with dinner-coat and waxed mustache glanced superciliously at Harry’s highly form-fitting bright-brown suit and Juanita’s tan silk frock, which was doubtful at the seams.  She glared back, defending her own, daring the world not to appreciate them.

Then, waving to them, she lost them down the long train shed.  She stood reading the list of stations:  Harrisburg, Pittsburg, Chicago.  Beyond Chicago——?  She saw the lakes and stubble fields, heard the rhythm of insects and the creak of a buggy, was greeted by Sam Clark’s “Well, well, how’s the little lady?”

Nobody in Washington cared enough for her to fret about her sins as Sam did.

But that night they had at the flat a man just back from Finland.

II

She was on the Powhatan roof with the captain.  At a table, somewhat vociferously buying improbable “soft drinks” for two fluffy girls, was a man with a large familiar back.

“Oh!  I think I know him,” she murmured.

“Who?  There?  Oh, Bresnahan, Percy Bresnahan.”

“Yes.  You’ve met him?  What sort of a man is he?”

“He’s a good-hearted idiot.  I rather like him, and I believe that as a salesman of motors he’s a wonder.  But he’s a nuisance in the aeronautic section.  Tries so hard to be useful but he doesn’t know anything—­he doesn’t know anything.  Rather pathetic:  rich man poking around and trying to be useful.  Do you want to speak to him?”

“No—­no—­I don’t think so.”

III

She was at a motion-picture show.  The film was a highly advertised and abysmal thing smacking of simpering hair-dressers, cheap perfume, red-plush suites on the back streets of tenderloins, and complacent fat women chewing gum.  It pretended to deal with the life of studios.  The leading man did a portrait which was a masterpiece.  He also saw visions in pipe-smoke, and was very brave and poor and pure.  He had ringlets, and his masterpiece was strangely like an enlarged photograph.