I am like a runner who has trained for a race, and, ready for
the speeding, finds that no race is on. But I've no business
to be surprised. I knew it would be like this, didn't I? the
one thing is to ¸make and keep mummy happy. She needs me _so_
much. And I am happy to be with her. Write me often--write me
everything. Gods, how I'd like a walk and talk with you!"

Mrs. Barrington did not attempt to conceal her interest in the letters
which Ray McCrea wrote her daughter. She was one of those women who
thrill at a masculine superscription on a letter. Perhaps she got more
satisfaction out of these not too frequent missives than Kate did
herself. While the writer didn't precisely say that he counted on Kate
to supply the woof of the fabric of life, that expectation made itself
evident between the lines to Mrs. Barrington's sentimental perspicacity.

Kate answered his letters, for it was pleasant to have a masculine
correspondent. It provided a needed stimulation. Moreover, in the back
of her mind she knew that he presented an avenue of escape if Silvertree
and home became unendurable. It seemed piteous enough that her life with
her parents should so soon have become a mere matter of duty and
endurance, but there was a feeling of perpetually treading on eggs in
the Barrington house. Kate could have screamed with exasperation as one
eventless day after another dawned and the blight of caution and
apprehension was never lifted from her mother and Martha. She writhed
with shame at the sight of her mother's cajolery of the tyrant she
served--and loved. To have spoken out once, recklessly, to have entered
a wordy combat without rancor and for the mere zest of tournament, to
have let the winnowing winds of satire blow through the house with its
stale sentimentalities and mental attitudes, would have reconciled her
to any amount of difference in the point of view. But the hushed voice