The Visioning | Page 4

said in voice she was clearly making
supreme effort to steady.
"I do indeed," said Kate simply and led the way into the house.

CHAPTER II
And now that they were face to face across a tea-table Miss Jones was
bunkered again. How get out of the sand? She did not know. She did
not even know what club to use.
For never had she drunk tea under similar circumstances. Life had
brought her varied experiences, but sitting across the teacups from one
whom she had interrupted on the brink of suicide did not chance to be
among them. She was wholly without precedent, and it was trying for
an army girl to be stripped of precedent.
They were sitting at a window which overlooked the river; the river
which was flowing on so serenely, which was so blue and lazy and
lovely that May afternoon. She looked to the place where--then back to

the girl across from her--the girl who but for her--
She shivered.
"Is it coming back?" the girl asked.
"N--o; I think not; but I hope you will not go." Then, desperately
resolved to break through, she asked boldly: "Am I keeping you from
anything important?"
A strange gleam, compounded of things she did not understand, shot
out at her. To be followed with: "Important? Oh I don't know. That
depends on how you look at it. The only thing I have left to do is to kill
myself. I guess it won't take long."
Kate met it with a sharp, involuntary cry. For the sullen steadiness,
dispassionateness, detachment with which it was said made it more real
than it had been at the water's edge.
"But--but you see it's such a lovely day. You know--you know it's such
a beautiful place," was what the resourceful Miss Jones found herself
stammering.
"Yes," agreed her companion, "pleasant weather, isn't it?" She looked
at Katie contemptuously. "You think weather makes any difference?
That's like a girl like you!"
Katie laughed. Laughing seemed the only sand club she had just then.
"I am a fool," she agreed. "I've often thought so myself. But like most
other fools I mean well, and this just didn't seem to me the sort of day
when it would occur to one to kill one's self. Now if it were terribly hot,
the kind of hot that takes your brains away, or so cold you were
freezing, or even if it were raining, not a decent rain, but that insulting
drizzle that makes you hate everything--why then, yes, I might
understand. But to kill one's self in the sunshine!"
As she was finishing she had a strange sensation. She saw that the girl
was looking at her compassionately. Katherine Wayneworth Jones was

not accustomed to being viewed with compassion.
"It would be foolish to try to make you understand," said the girl
simply, finality in her weariness. "It would be foolish to try to make a
girl like you understand that nothing can be so bad as sunshine."
Katie leaned across the table. This interested her. "Why I suppose that
might be true. I suppose--"
But the girl was not listening. She was leaning back in the great wicker
chair. She seemed actually to be relaxing, resting. That seemed strange
to Kate. How could she be resting in an hour which had just been
tacked on to her life? And then it came to her that perhaps it was a long
time since the girl had sat in a chair like that. If she had had a chance,
when things were going badly, to sit in such a chair and rest, might the
river have seemed a less desirable place? She had always supposed it
was big things--queer, abstract, unknowable things like forces and traits
that made life and death. Did chairs count?
As the girl's eyes closed, surrenderingly, Katie was glad that no matter
what she might decide to do about things she had had that hour in the
big, tenderly cushioned wicker chair. It might be a kinder memory to
take with her from life than anything she had known for a long time.
Katherine had grown very still, still both outwardly and inwardly.
People spoke of her enviously as having experienced so much; living in
all parts of the world, knowing people of all nations and kinds. But it
seemed all of that had been mere splashing around on the beach. She
was out in the big waves now.
She looked at the girl; looked with the eyes of one who would
understand.
And what she saw was that some one, something, had, as it were,
struck a blow at the center, and the girl, the something that really was
her, had gone to pieces. Everything was scattered. Even her features
scarcely