her triumph.

5

I went to see Katherine Varick that evening. I often do when I have been
meeting women like Lady Pinkerton, because there is a danger that that
kind of woman, so common and in a sense so typical, may get to bulk too
large in one's view of women, and lead one into the sin of
generalisation. So many women are such very dreadful fools--men too, for
that matter, but more women--that one needs to keep in pretty frequent
touch with those who aren't, with the women whose brains, by nature and
training, grip and hold. Of these, Katherine Varick has as fine and keen
a mind and as good a head as any I know. She isn't touched anywhere with
Potterism; she has the scientific temperament. Katherine and I are great
friends. From the first she did a good deal of work for the
_Fact_--reviews of scientific books, mostly. I went to see her, to get
the taste of Lady Pinkerton out of my mouth.

I found her doing something with test-tubes and bottles--some experiment
with carbohydrates, I think it was. I watched her till she was through
with it, then we talked. That is the way one puts it, but as a matter of
fact Katherine seldom does much of the talking; one talks to her. She
listens, and puts in from time to time some critical comment that often
extraordinarily clears up any subject one is talking round. She
contributes as much as any one I know to the conversation, but in such
condensed tabloids that it doesn't take her long. Most things don't seem
to her to be worth saying. She'll let, for instance, a chatterbox like
Juke say a hundred words to her one, and still she'll get most said,
though Jukie's not a vapid talker either.

'Jane,' she told me, 'is coming back next week. The marriage is to be at
the end of April.'

'A rapidity worthy of the Hustling Press. Jukie will be sorry. He hopes
yet to wrest her as a brand from the burning.'

Katherine smiled at Juke's characteristic sanguineness.

'Jukie won't do that. If Jane means to do a thing she does it. Jane knows
what she wants.'

'And she wants Hobart?' I pondered it, turning it over, still puzzled.

'She wants Hobart,' Katherine agreed. 'And all that Hobart will let
her in to.'

'The _Daily Haste_? The society of the Pinkerton journalists?'

'And of a number of other people. Some of them fairly important people,
you know. The editor of the _Daily Haste_ has to transact business with a
good many notorious persons, no doubt. That would amuse Jane. She's