satisfying. I have more than once felt it was cheating me. I'm not
getting enough--just because I don't know. Loving a thing because you
don't know it isn't a very high way of loving it, is it? I believe I
could know it and still love it--love it, indeed, the more truly. No, you
don't think so; but I want to try." She paused, thinking; then saw it and
spoke it strongly. "I've never done anything real. I've never done
anything that counted. That's why I'm an outsider. If making a place for
you here is going to make one for me there--on the inside, I mean--you're
not going to refuse to take me in, are you?"

Something seemed to leap up in the girl's eyes, but to crouch back,
afraid. "What do you know about me?" she whispered.

"Not much. Only that you've met things I never had to meet, met them much
better, doubtless, than I should have met them. Only that you've fought
in the real, while I've flitted around here on the playground." Katie's
eyes contracted to keenness. "And I wonder if there isn't more dignity in
fighting--yes, and losing--in the real, than just sitting around where
you get nothing more unpleasant than the faint roar of the guns. To lose
fighting--or not to fight! Why certainly there can be no question about
it. What do I know about you?" she came back to it.

"Only that you seemed just shot into my life, strangely disturbing it,
ruffling it so queerly. It's too ruffled now to settle down without--more
ruffling. So you're not going away leaving it in any such distressing
state, are you?" she concluded with a smile which lighted her face with a
fine seriousness.

She made a last stand. "But you don't know. You don't understand."