for the fastidious Fragonard. Kitty was naturally an exquisite.
Everything about her was dainty, her body and her mind. The
background of pans and dishes, gas range and sink did not absorb
Kitty; her presence here in the morning lifted everything out of the
rut of commonplace and created an atmosphere that was ornamental.
Pink peignoir and turquoise-blue boudoir cap, silk petticoat and
stockings and adorable little slippers. No harm to tell the secret!
Kitty was educating herself for a husband. She knew that if she
acquired the habit of daintiness at breakfast before marriage it
would become second nature after marriage. Moreover, she was
determined that it should be tremendous news that would cause a
newspaper to intervene. She had all the confidence in the world
in her mirror.

She got her breakfast this morning, singing. She was happy. She
had found a door out of monotony; theatrical drama had given way to
the living. She had opened the book of adventure and she was going
straight through to finis. That there was an undertow of the
sinister escaped her or she ignored it.

In all high-strung Irish souls there is a bit of the old wife, the
foreteller; the gift of prescience; and Kitty possessed this in a
mild degree. Something held her here, when for a dozen reasons she
should have gone elsewhere.

She strained the coffee, humming a tune out of The Mikado, the
revival of which she had seen lately:

My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time