one a new set of furs.  She remembered so well one evening she had been in Clara’s room when Wayne came in after having been away since early morning.  So eager and tender was Wayne’s face as he approached Clara, who was looking over an advertising circular.  There was a light in his eyes which it would seem would have made Clara forget all about advertising circulars.  But before he had said a word, but stood there, loving her with that look—­and it would have to be admitted Clara did look lovely, in one of the neglige affairs she affected so much—­she said, with a babyish little whine she evidently thought alluring:  “I just don’t see, Wayne, why we can’t have a new rug for the reception room.  We can certainly afford things as well as the Mitchells.”  And Wayne had just stood there, with a smile which closed the gates and said, with an irony not lost upon Katie, at least:  “Why I fancy we can have a new rug, if that is the thing most essential to our happiness.”  Clara had cried:  “Oh Wayne—­you dear!” and twittered and fluttered around, but the twittering and fluttering did not bring that light back to Wayne’s face.  He went over to the far side of the room and began reading the paper, and that grim little understanding smile—­a smile at himself—­made Katie yearn to go over and wind her arms about his neck—­dear strange Wayne who had believed there was so much, and found so little, and who was so alive to the bitter humor of being drawn to the heart of things only to be pushed back to the outer rim.  But Katie knew it was not her arms could do any good, and so she had left the room, not clear-eyed, Clara still twittering about the kind of rug she would have.  And day by day she had watched Wayne go back to the outer circle, that grim little smile as mile-stones in his progress.

But he was folding his paper; it was growing too near the hour to speculate longer on Wayne and his past.

“Wayne?” she began.

He looked up, smiling at the beseeching tone.  “Yes?  What is it, Katie?  Just what brand of boredom are you planning to inflict?”

“You can be so nice, Wayne—­when you want to be.”

“’Um—­hum.  A none too subtle way of calling a man a brute.”

“I presume there are times when you can’t help being a brute, Wayne; but I do hope to-night will not be one of them.”

“Why it must be something very horrible indeed, that you must approach with all this flaunting of diplomacy.”

“It is something a long way from horrible, I assure you,” she replied with dignity.  “Ann will be down for dinner to-night, Wayne.”

He leaned back and devoted himself to his cigarette with maddening deliberation.  Then he smiled.  “Through sleeping?”

“Wayne—­I’m in earnest.  Please don’t get yourself into a hateful mood!”

He laughed in real amusement at sight of Katie’s puckered face.  “I am conscious that feminine wiles are being exercised upon me.  I wonder—­why?”