to? Going forth to meet one's God because one doesn't like
the peg for one's hat!"

Katie had a feeling of every nerve in Ann's body leaping up in frenzy.
"_God_?" she laughed wildly. "Don't drag _Him_ into it! Do you think _He_
cares"--turning upon Mrs. Prescott as if she would spring at her--"do you
think for a minute _He_ cares--_what kind of pegs our hats are on_!"

CHAPTER XXI

Katie's memory of what followed was blurred. She remembered how relieved
she was when Ann's laugh--oh the memory of that laugh was clear
enough!--gave way to sobbing. Sobbing was easier to deal with. She said
something about her friend's being ill, and that they would have to
excuse them. She almost wanted to laugh--or was it cry?--herself at the
way Harry Prescott was looking from Ann to his mother. After she got Ann
in the house she went back and begged somebody's pardon--she wasn't sure
whose--and told Colonel Leonard that of course he could understand it on
the score of Ann's being a neurotic. She was afraid she might have said
that rather disagreeably. And she believed she told Mrs. Prescott--she
had to tell Mrs. Prescott something, she looked so frightened and hurt
and outraged--that Ann had a form of nervous trouble which made it
impossible for her to hear the name of God.

The hardest was Wayne. She came to him on the porch after the others had
gone--they were not long in dispersing. "Wayne," she said, "I'm sorry to
have embarrassed you."

His short, curt laugh did not reveal his mood. It was
scoffing--contemptuous--but she could not tell at what it scoffed. He had
not turned toward her.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. "Ann will be sorry. She's so--"

He turned upon her hotly. "Katie, quit lying to _me_. I know there's
something you're not telling. I've suspected it for some time. Now don't
get off any of that 'nervous trouble' talk to me!"

She stood there dumbly.

It seemed to enrage him. "Why don't you go and look after her! What do
you mean by leaving her all alone?"

So she went to look after her.

Ann looked like one who needed looking after. Her eyes were intolerably
bright. It seemed the heat behind them must put them out.

She was walking about the room, walking as if something were behind her
with a lash.

"You see, Katie," she began, not pausing in the walking--her voice,
too, as though a whip were behind it--"it was just as I told you. It
was just as I tried to tell you. There are two worlds. There's