In all high-strung Irish souls there is a bit of the old wife, the

foreteller; the gift of prescience; and Kitty possessed this in a mild

degree. Something held her here, when for a dozen reasons she should

have gone elsewhere.

She strained the coffee, humming a tune out of The Mikado, the revival

of which she had seen lately:

My object all sublime

I shall achieve in time

To make the punishment fit the crime.

The punishment fit the crime.

And make the prisoner pent

Unwillingly represent

A source of innocent merriment.

Of innocent merriment!

And there you were! To make the punishment fit the crime. Wall in the

Bolsheviki, the I.W.W.'s, the Red Socialist, the anarchists--and let

them try it for ten years. Those left would be glad enough to embrace

democracy and sanity. The poor benighted things, to imagine that they

were going forward there in Russia! What kind of mentality was it that

could conceive a blessing to humanity in the abolition of baths and

work? And Cutty felt sorry for them. Well, as for that, so did Kitty

Conover; and she would continue feeling sorry for them so long as they

remained thousands of miles away. But next door!

"Grapefruit, eggs on toast, and coffee; mademoiselle is served!" she

cried, gayly, sitting down and attacking her breakfast with the zest of

healthy youth.

Often the eyes are like the lenses of a camera minus the sensitized

plate; they see objects without printing them. Thus a dozen times

Kitty's glance absently swept the range and the racks on each side of

the stovepipe, one rack burdened with an empty pancake jug and the other

cluttered with old-fashioned flatirons; but she saw nothing.

She was carefully reviewing the events of the night before. She could

not dismiss the impression that Cutty knew Stefani Gregor or had heard

of him; and in either case it signified that Gregor was something more

than a valet. And decidedly Two-Hawks was not of the Russian peasantry.

By the time she was ready to leave for the office the Irish blood in

her was seething and bubbling and dancing. She knew she would do crazy,

impulsive things all day. It was easy to analyze this exuberance. She

had reached out into the dark and touched danger, and found a new thrill

in a humdrum world.

The Great Dramatist had produced a tremendous drama and she had watched

curtain after curtain fall from the wrong side of the lights. Now she

had been given a speaking part; and she would be down stage for a moment

or two--dusting the furniture--while the stars were retouching

their make-up. It was not the thought of Cutty, of Gregor, of Johnny

Two-Hawks, of hidden treasure; simply she had arrived somewhere in the

great drama.




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