"Is he satisfied? Is she companioned? Has this one realized himself? Is that one really living?"
She remembered one person--one only--who had given her the impression of abounding physical, mental, and spiritual life. True, she had seen him but a moment--one swift, absurd, curiously haunting moment. That was Karl Wander, Honora's cousin, and the cousin of Mary Morrison. They were the children of three sisters, and from what Kate knew of their descendants' natures, she felt these sisters must have been palpitating creatures.
Yes, Karl Wander had seemed complete--a happy man, seething with plans, a wise man who took life as it came; a man of local qualities yet of cosmopolitan spirit--one who would not have fretted at his environment or counted it of much consequence, whatever it might have been.
If she could have known him--
But Honora seldom spoke of him. Only sometimes she read a brief note from him, and added:--
"He wishes to be remembered to you, Kate."
She did not hint: "He saw you only a second." Honora was not one of those persons who take pleasure in pricking bubbles. She perceived the beauty of iridescence. If her odd friend and her inexplicable cousin had any satisfaction in remembering a passing encounter, they could have their pleasure of it.
Kate, for her part, would not have confessed that she thought of him. But, curiously, she sometimes dreamed of him.
At last Ray McCrea was coming home. His frequent letters, full of good comment, announced the fact.
"I've been winning my spurs, commercially speaking," he wrote. "The old department heads, whom my father taught me to respect, seem pleased with what I have done. I believe that when I come back they will have ceased to look on me as a cadet. And if they think I'm fit for responsibilities, perhaps you will think so, too, Kate. At any rate, I know you'll let me say that I am horribly homesick. This being in a foreign land is all very well, but give me the good old American ways, crude though they may be. I want a straightforward confab with some one of my own sort; I want the feeling that I can move around without treading on somebody's toes. I want, above all, to have a comfortable entertaining evening with a nice American girl--a girl that takes herself and me for granted, and isn't shying off all the time as if I were a sort of bandit. What a relief to think that you'll not be accompanied by a chaperon! I shall get back my self-respect once I'm home again with you nice, self-confident young American women."