even know what club to use.

For never had she drunk tea under similar circumstances. Life had brought
her varied experiences, but sitting across the teacups from one whom she
had interrupted on the brink of suicide did not chance to be among them.
She was wholly without precedent, and it was trying for an army girl to
be stripped of precedent.

They were sitting at a window which overlooked the river; the river which
was flowing on so serenely, which was so blue and lazy and lovely that
May afternoon. She looked to the place where--then back to the girl
across from her--the girl who but for her--

She shivered.

"Is it coming back?" the girl asked.

"N--o; I think not; but I hope you will not go." Then, desperately
resolved to break through, she asked boldly: "Am I keeping you from
anything important?"

A strange gleam, compounded of things she did not understand, shot out at
her. To be followed with: "Important? Oh I don't know. That depends on
how you look at it. The only thing I have left to do is to kill myself.
I guess it won't take long."

Kate met it with a sharp, involuntary cry. For the sullen steadiness,
dispassionateness, detachment with which it was said made it more real
than it had been at the water's edge.