Thoughts and smoke seemed circling around Wayne together; and perhaps the blue rim of it all was dreams. His face was not what one would expect the face of a man engaged in making warfare more deadly to be as he murmured, not to Katie but to the thin outer rim, softly, as to rims barely material: "And more than that—a woman."
He puzzled her. "Well, Wayne," she laughed, "aren't you getting a little—cryptic? I certainly told you—by implication—that she was both a lady and a woman. Then why this air of discovery?"
But it did not get Katie into the smoke. He made no effort to get her in, but after a moment came back to her with a kindly: "I am glad you have such a friend, Katie. It will do you good."
That inward chuckle showed no disposition to dissolve into anything; it fought hard to be just a live, healthy chuckle.
Moved by an impulse half serious, half mischievous she asked: "You would say then, Wayne, that Ann seems to you more of a lady than Zelda Fraser?"
Wayne's real answer lay in his look of disgust. He did condescend to put into words: "Oh, don't be absurd, Katie."
"But Zelda has a splendid ancestry," she pressed.
"And suggests a chorus girl."
That stilled her. It left her things to think about.
At last she asked: "And Wayne, which would you say I was?"