She sat down. The sharpness had gone and her voice was shaking as she said: "You certainly must know, Ann, that he can't do that."
So they faced each other—and the whole of it. It was all opened up now.
"It's very strange to me," Katie added hotly, "that you wouldn't know that."
It seemed impossible for Ann to speak; the attack had been too quick and too sharp; evidently, too unexpected.
"I told him so," she finally whispered. "Told and told him so. That you would feel—this way. That it—couldn't be. He said no. That you felt—all differently—after last summer. And I thought so, too. Your letters sounded that way."
Katie covered her eyes for a second. It was too much as if the things she was feeling differently about were the things she was losing.
"And when you want to be happy," Ann went on, "it's not so hard to persuade yourself—be persuaded." She stopped with a sob.
"I know that," was wrung wretchedly from Katie.
"And since—since I have been happy—let myself think it could be—it just hasn't seemed it could be any other way. So I stopped thinking—hadn't been thinking—took it for granted—"
Again it wrung from Katie the this time unexpressed admission that there was nothing much easier than coming to look upon one's happiness as the inevitable.