“Nonsense, Kate, don’t go to the other extreme. I remember nothing you have said that needs withdrawal. You have never made a malicious remark in your life, Kate. Don’t make me defend you against yourself. You have determined, I take it, to plunge into the subjects which interest the man you are going to marry. That is a perfectly laudable ambition, and I am quite sure you will succeed.”
“I know I don’t deserve all that, Dorothy, but I like it just the same. I like people to believe in me, even if I sometimes lose faith in myself. May I read you an extract from his letter?”
“I’d rather, Dorothy, if it doesn’t weary you, but you will understand when you have heard it, in what a new light I regard myself.”
The letter proved to be within the leaves of the late Mr. Steele’s book on Chemistry, and from this volume she extracted it, pressed it for a moment against her breast with her open hand, gazing across at her friend.
She turned the crisp, thin pages, and began:
“‘You may recollect that foot-note which you marked with red ink in the book you so kindly gave me on the subject of Catalysis, which did not pertain to the subject of the volume in question, and yet was so illuminative to any student of chemistry. They have done a great deal with Catalysis in Germany with amazing commercial results, but the subject is one so recent that I had not previously gone thoroughly into it.’”
Katherine paused in the reading, and looked across at her auditor, an expression almost of despair in her eloquent eyes.
“Dorothy, what under heaven is Catalysis?”
“Don’t ask me,” replied Dorothy, suppressing a laugh, struck by the ludicrousness of any young and beautiful woman pressing any such sentiments as these to her bosom.
“Have you ever heard of a Catalytic process, Dorothy?” beseeched Katherine. “It is one of the phrases he uses.”
“‘I saw at once that if I could use Catalytic process which would be instantaneous in its solidifying effect on my liquid limestone, instead of waiting upon slow evaporation, I could turn out building stone faster than one can make brick. You, I am sure, with your more alert mind, saw this when you marked that passage in red.’”
“Oh, Dorothy,” almost whimpered Katherine, leaning back, “how can I go on? Don’t you see what a sneak I am? It was bad enough to cozen with my heedless, random markings of the book, but to think that line of red ink might have been marked in his blood, for I nearly sent the poor boy to his death.”