Feeling that first efforts, even on life-preservers, should not be long ones, it was soon after they returned to the library that Katie threw out: "Well, Ann, if that letter must be written--" Ann rose.

"Yes, and it must." "But morning is the time for letter writing," urged Wayne.
"Morning in this instance is the time for shopping," said Kate.
She had left Ann at the foot of the stairs, murmuring something about having to see Nora.

It was a half hour later that she looked in upon her.
What she saw was too much for Katie.

Had the whole of creation been wrecked by her laughing, Katie must needs have laughed just then.
For Ann's two hands gripped "Days in Florence" with fierce resolution.
Ann's head was bent over the book in a sort of stern frenzy.

Ann, not even having waited to disrobe, was attacking Florence as the good old city had never been attacked before.
She seemed to get the significance of Katie's laugh, however, for it was as to a confederate she whispered: "I'll get caught!" "Trust me," said Kate, and laughed from a new angle.
Ann could laugh, too, and when Katie sat down to "talk it over" they were that most intimate of all things in the world, two girls with a secret, two girls set apart from all the world by that secret they held from all the world, hugging between them a beautiful, brilliant secret and laughing at the rest of the world because it couldn't get in.