ar away from things
that hurt and harm. Almost as if it might draw back things that had
gone. I was going to keep it--" Katie's eyes deepened, there was a
little catch in her voice. "Well, I was just keeping it. But because you
are so tired--oh just because you need it so.--I want you to let me give
it to you."

And with a tender strength holding the sobbing girl Katie unfastened her
collar and began taking off her dress.

CHAPTER III

"Kate," demanded Captain Jones, "what's that noise?"

"How should I know?" airily queried Kate.

"I heard a noise in the room above. This chimney carries every sound."

"Nonsense," jeered his sister. "Wayne, you've lived alone so long that
you're getting spooky."

He turned to the other man. "Prescott, didn't you hear something?"

"Believe I did. It sounded like a cough."

"Well, what of it?" railed Kate. "Isn't poor Nora permitted to cough, if
she is disposed to cough? She's in there doing the room for me. I'm going
to try sleeping in there--isn't insomnia a fearful thing? But the
fussiness of men!"

They were in the library over their coffee. Kate was peculiarly charming
that night in one of the thin white gowns she wore so much, and which it
seemed so fitting she should wear. She had been her gayest. Prescott was
thinking he had never known any one who seemed to sparkle and bubble that
way; and so easily and naturally, as though it came from an inner fount
of perpetual action, and could more easily rise than be held down. And he
was wondering why a girl who had so many of the attributes of a boy
should be so much more fascinating than any mere girl. "There are two
kinds of girl," he had heard an older officer once say. "There are girls,
and then there is Katie Jones." He had condemned that as distinctly
maudlin at the time, but recalled it to-night with less condemnation.

"Katie," exclaimed Wayne, after his sister had read aloud some one's
engagement from the Army and Navy Register, and wondered vehemently how
those two people ever expected to live together, "Nora's out on the side
porch with Watts!"

"Do you disapprove of this affair between Nora and Watts?" Katie wanted
to know, critically inspecting the design on her coffee spoon.

"I distinctly disapprove of having some one coughing in the room upstairs
and not being satisfied who the some one is!"

She leaned forward, pointing her spoon at him earnestly. "Wayne, they say
there are some excellent nerve spe