ould have been
talking of in those last blocks--and they had talked of nothing.

But the new warmth flooded Katie's heart at thought of having talked of
nothing. What was there to talk about so important as talking of
nothing? In a new way it drew her back to the crowds; the crowds that
talked so loudly of many unlovely things in order to still in their
hearts that call for the loveliness of talking of nothing.

It gave her new understanding of Ann. Ann was one who must rest in the
wonder of talking of nothing. It was for that she had gone down. The
world had destroyed her for the very thing for which life loved
her--Katie joining with the world.

She would not have done that to-night. To-night, in the face of all the
world, she must have joined with life.

She wondered if all along it was not the thing for which she had most
loved Ann. This shy new thing in her own heart seemed revealing Ann. It
was kin to her, and to Katie's feeling for her.

Many times she had wondered why she cared so terribly, would ask herself,
as she could hear her friends asking if they knew: "But does it matter so
much as all this?"

She had never been able to make clear to herself why it mattered so
much--mattered more than anything else mattered. None of the reasons
presenting themselves on the surface were commensurate to the depth of
the feeling. To-night she wondered if deep below all else might not lie
that thing of Ann's representing life, her failure with Ann meaning
infidelity to life.

It turned her to Ann's letter;--she had not had the courage to read it
for a number of days.

"Katie," Ann had written, "I'm writing to try and show you that you were
not all wrong. That there was something there. And I'm not doing it for
myself, Katie. I'm doing it for you.

"If I can just forget I'm writing about myself, feel instead that I'm
writing about somebody you've cared for, believed in, somebody who has
disappointed and hurt you, trying to show you--for _your_ sake--if I
don't mind being either egotistical or terrible for the sake of
showing you--

"It's not _me_ that matters, Katie--it's what you thought of me. That's
why I'm writing.

"I never could talk to you right. For a long time I couldn't talk at all,
and then that night I talked most of the night I didn't tell the real
things, after all. And at the last I told you something I knew would hurt
you without telling you the things that might keep it from hurting,
without sa