"And you! Here in a place like this--what do you know about it? Why
you're nothing but an--outsider!"

An outsider, was she?--and she had thought that Ann--

The girl's passion seemed suddenly to flow into one long, cunning look.
"What are you doing it for?" she asked quietly with a sort of insolently
indifferent suspicion.

"I don't know," Katie replied simply. "At least until a minute ago I
didn't know, and now I wonder if perhaps, without knowing it, I was not
trying to make up for some of those people--for I fear some of them were
friends of mine--who have gone ahead by kicking other people out of their
way. Perhaps their kicks provided my laughs. Perhaps, unconsciously,
it--bothered me."

Passion had burned to helplessness, the appealing helplessness of the
weary child. She sat there, hands loosely clasped in her lap, looking at
Katie with great solemn eyes, tired wistful mouth. And it seemed to Kate
that she was looking, not at her, but at life, that life which had cast
her out, looking, not with rage now, but with a hurt reproachfulness in
which there was a heartbreaking longing.

It drew Katie over to the table. She stretched her hand out across it, as
if seeking to bridge something, and spoke with an earnest dignity. "You
say I'm an outsider. Then won't you take me in? I don't want to be an
outsider. You mustn't think too badly of me for it because you see I have
just stayed where I was put. But I want to know life. I love it now, and
yet, easy and pleasant though it is, I can't say that I find it very