e up for some of those people--for I fear some of them were
friends of mine--who have gone ahead by kicking other people out of their
way. Perhaps their kicks provided my laughs. Perhaps, unconsciously,
it--bothered me."

Passion had burned to helplessness, the appealing helplessness of the
weary child. She sat there, hands loosely clasped in her lap, looking at
Katie with great solemn eyes, tired wistful mouth. And it seemed to Kate
that she was looking, not at her, but at life, that life which had cast
her out, looking, not with rage now, but with a hurt reproachfulness in
which there was a heartbreaking longing.

It drew Katie over to the table. She stretched her hand out across it, as
if seeking to bridge something, and spoke with an earnest dignity. "You
say I'm an outsider. Then won't you take me in? I don't want to be an
outsider. You mustn't think too badly of me for it because you see I have
just stayed where I was put. But I want to know life. I love it now, and
yet, easy and pleasant though it is, I can't say that I find it very
satisfying. I have more than once felt it was cheating me. I'm not
getting enough--just because I don't know. Loving a thing because you
don't know it isn't a very high way of loving it, is it? I believe I
could know it and still love it--love it, indeed, the more truly. No, you
don't think so; but I want to try." She paused, thinking; then saw it and
spoke it strongly. "I've never done anything real. I've never done
anything that counted. That's why I'm an outsider. If making a place for
you here is going to make one for me there--on the inside, I mean--you're
not going to refuse to take me in, are you?"

Something seemed to leap up in the girl's eyes, but to crouch back,
afraid. "What do you know about me?" she whispered.

"Not much. Only that you've met things I never had to meet, met them much
better, doubtless, than I should have met them. Only that you've fought
in the real, while I've flitted around here on the playground." Katie's
eyes contracted to keenness. "And I wonder if there isn't more dignity in
fighting--yes, and losing--in the real, than just sitting around where
you get nothing more unpleasant than the faint roar of the guns. To lose
fighting--or not to fight! Why certainly there can be no question about
it. What do I know about you?" she came back to it.

"Only that you seemed just shot into my life, strangely disturbing it,
ruffling it so queerly. It's too ruf