Ann colored.
"It is spelled K-a-t-i-e," Kate went on, "and is pronounced K—T. Try it,
Ann. See if you can say it."
Ann looked at her. The look itself crossed the border country. "Katie—" she choked—and the country of make-believe fell palely away.
But they did not speak of the things they had stirred.
That thing of not saying it had been established the day Ann's bank account was opened. Katie had been "over the river," as she called going over to the city. Upon returning she found Ann up in her room. She stood there unpinning her hat, telling of an automobile accident on the bridge—Katie seldom came in without some stirring tale. As she was leaving she rummaged in her bag. "And oh yes, Ann," she said, carelessly, "here's your bank book. I presumed to draw twenty dollars for you, thinking you might need it before you could get over. Oh dear—that telephone! And I know it's Wayne for me."
But she did not escape. Ann was waiting for her when she came back up stairs.
She held out the book, shaking her head. Her face told that she had been pulled back.
"Not money," she said unsteadily. "All the rest of it is bad enough—but not money. I'd have no—self-respect."
"Self-respect!" jeered Kate. "I'd have no self-respect if I didn't take money. Nobody can be self-respecting when broke. None of the rest of us seem to be inquiring into our sources of revenue, so why should you?"
As had happened that other time, in relation to the suit, the thing shot out at Ann turned back to her. It had more than once occurred that the thing thrown out sparingly persisted as thing to be considered genuinely. Her browbeating of Ann—for it was a sort of tender, protective browbeating—led her to reach out blindly for weapons, and once in her hand many of those weapons proved ideas.