Katherine smiled at Juke's characteristic sanguineness.
'Jukie won't do that. If Jane means to do a thing she does it. Jane knows what she wants.'
'And she wants Hobart?' I pondered it, turning it over, still puzzled.
'She wants Hobart,' Katherine agreed. 'And all that Hobart will let her in to.'
'The Daily Haste? The society of the Pinkerton journalists?'
'And of a number of other people. Some of them fairly important people, you know. The editor of the Daily Haste has to transact business with a good many notorious persons, no doubt. That would amuse Jane. She's all for life. I dare say the wife of the editor of the Haste has a pretty good front window for the show. Jane likes playing about with people, as you like playing with ideas, and I with chemicals…. Besides, beauty counts with Jane. It does with every one. She's probably fallen in love.'
That was all we said about it. We talked for the rest of the evening about the Fact.
6
But when I went to Jane's wedding, I understood about the 'number of other people' that Hobart let Jane in to. They had been married that afternoon by the Registrar, Jane having withstood the pressure of her parents, who preferred weddings to be in churches. Hobart didn't much care; he was, he said, a Presbyterian by upbringing, but sat loosely to it, and didn't care for fussy weddings. Jane frankly disbelieved in what she called 'all that sort of thing.' So they went before the Registrar, and gave a party in the evening at the Carlton.
We all went, even Juke, who had failed to snatch Jane from the burning. I don't know that it was a much queerer party than other wedding parties, which are apt to be an ill-assorted mixture of the bridegroom's circle and the bride's. And, except for Jane's own personal friends, these two circles largely overlapped in this case. The room was full of journalists, important and unimportant, business people, literary people, and a few politicians of the same colour as the Pinkerton press. There were a lot of dreadful women, who, I supposed, were Lady Pinkerton's friends (probably literary women; one of them was introduced to Juke as 'the editress of Forget-me-not'), and a lot of vulgar men, many of whom looked like profiteers. But, besides all these, there were undoubtedly interesting people and people of importance. And I realised that the editor of the Haste, like the other editors of important papers, must, of necessity, as Katherine had said, have a lot to do with such people.