Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/305

Rh Yes, she had been saved from that.

She thought little of clothes, although the soft grey dress she wore, made beautiful lines over her slight figure. And flirtations! All the satisfaction there is to be gained from having no flirtations was hers, and yet somehow she wished that Katharine would give her mind to her exercise-books, instead of sitting there thanking heaven that they were not as other women.

"I don't believe you would have lived long in a life of that kind," Katharine said, looking at her broad quiet brow and long sensitive hands. "It's impossible to imagine you without work and without a purpose."

"I confess there was a time when I liked a little of it; a little, you know."

Lucy Wren smiled and asked, "Of which? of dress, or of flirtation?"

"Both I think," and the blue and red pencil remained idly balanced in Katharine's fingers, and the picture of good sense grew pensive.

"I always feel that it has been knowing you that has made me look at things differently. After I knew you things seemed almost vulgar, that before I had thought only fun. In fact there are things I've never dared confess to you; they are nothing much, but I don't think you'd ever quite forgive or understand."

Lucy did not protest that she would, and so no confidence was given.

"I shan't get through these books if you will talk," was what she said, and she opened an exercise-book.

"That child's mind is a perfect chaos," she murmured as she wrote "Very poor work" across the page at the bottom.

Katharine had an unusual desire to talk; she fidgeted, and at last, finding Lucy absolutely unresponsive she left the table and her

Rh