having
a conference. He was acquainted with the palate of the visiting
staff officer, and was assuring Katie that she was on the way to
his good graces.

They had gone into the library, where Katie was arranging flowers. He
offered a suggestion there, too. He had an intuitive knowledge of such
things, seemed to be guided by inner promptings as to which bowl should
hold the lavender sweet peas and which the pink ones.

Though Katie disputed his judgment, glad to be on ground where she could
dispute with assurance. They argued it hotly, as if sweet peas were the
most vital things in the world. It was good to be venting all one's
feeling on things so tangible and knowable as sweet peas.

Her dinner safe in the hands of experts, Katie made herself comfortable
and told her friend the Major that she wished now to be put in a
brilliant mood. That a brilliant mood was the one thing the skilled
laborers in possession of her house could not furnish.

He gallantly defied any laborer in the world to be so skilled as to get
Katie out of a brilliant mood.

She told him that was silly, that she had grown very stupid.

He challenged her to prove it.

Katie felt very much at home with him; not merely at home with him the
individual, but comfortably at home with the things he represented. It
gave her a nice homelike feeling to be flirting with him.

And flirting with him herself, she grew interested in all those others
who had flirted with him--she knew they were legion. She seemed to see
them off there in the background--a lovely group of spoiled darlings. She
did not suppose many of them were much the worse for having flirted with
Major Darrett. Suddenly she laughed and told him she regarded him as one
of the great educators of the age. He wanted to know in what way he was
a great educator. Katie would not tell him. There ensued a gay discussion
from which she emerged feeling as if she had had a cocktail.

And looking that way; looking, at least so he seemed to think, from the
manner in which he leaned forward regarding her--most attractive, her
cheeks so pink, her eyes dancing a little dance of defiance at him, and
on her lips a mocking little smile, more sophisticated than any smile he
had ever seen before on Katie's lips. "Katie of the laughing eyes"--he
had once called her. She was leaning back lazily, a suggestion of
insolence in her assurance. As she leaned back that way he marked the
lines of her figure as he had never