All that morning, from the time she had happened upon the _Times_ headlines soon after breakfast, she had tramped—she didn’t know where—in woods and fields. And all the afternoon she had lain here, exhausted, smoking cigarette after cigarette, watching the light change across the lawn and garden and the edges of the woods, and waiting for Glenn. Ariel she had avoided, rather than hunt her out. For Ariel had done for her, Anne, what there had been nobody to do for Prescott. And Anne almost resented that she had had an Ariel to go to, when Prescott had had no one. If Anne herself was any good, Prescott would have had her, as she had had Ariel.... If she had been understanding.... If she had been able to break the snare of her own blind, egoistic passion and had not driven him away from her by clutching at—what never comes for clutching.... How terrible to be deaf and dumb and blind with passionate love—and to lose that way all the possibilities of friendship and its salvations! And now, even if the beloved ever came sane,—and, blind in one eye and shattered, should undertake to face the world again and its bitterness, it would never be Anne who would help steady him to it. It would be Glenn, perhaps. And, looking at the paper narcissus which had sprung erect again with delicate vitality from Glenn’s kick, she made a resolution that Glenn must not know to what a degree she was suffering over the plight of—his friend. Why, one of the reasons for Prescott’s breaking with her was his desire that Glenn should never know how far their affair had gone. He had valued Glenn’s comradeship mountains above Anne’s stupid, egoistic passion of love. And he was right to do so. One thing she could save from the wreck of what might have become a fine, even a lovely, human relationship with Prescott: she could save Prescott’s self-respect with her brother and incidentally, but not primarily, for truly she was not thinking of herself in the old way any more, her own self-respect. “Joan’s called off the dinner to-night, I suppose,” Glenn muttered. “Not so far as I know,” Anne said, keeping her voice from shaking with better success than her hands. “And I don’t think she will. In fact, I hope she won’t. For both Hugh’s and Ariel’s sake. And why should she? She’ll pretend, don’t you think, to be absolutely out of all this business?” “Yes. I suppose she will. But, of course I shan’t go. And you needn’t either, Anne. After all, you were fond of him too. You can say you’re cut up, as I shall say.” Suddenly he turned and looked at her with a sharpness that almost broke down her defenses. “And I believe you are. Of course you are. You and Pressy were quite pals. Anyway, I know he liked you tremendously.” “But I’m going. I’m going, no matter what, Glenn! For Ariel’s and Hugh’s sake!” Glenn’s face softened at this repetition of Ariel’s name. “Why for their sakes?” he asked. “Why should they be so keen on eating dinner at Holly this particular night?”