One day Kit came to Joan’s when Anne was there. It was a Sunday afternoon, so Antony was at home. Kit stalked in with such a desperate air that little Anne told herself that he looked as if he was going to do something awful! He nearly kicked Guard, who had grown enormously, but had not outgrown his first adoration of Kit, and toward whom Kit held himself as sponsor because he had endorsed the dog in his infancy and advised his purchase. Kit did not kick the exuberant animal but he visibly refrained from doing so, and patted him instead. It was wonder enough for little Anne that he had felt like kicking. He hardly noticed the child--another alarming symptom. Little Anne retired to a corner with Barbara, now capable of being led there, and played house with the baby in a one-sided fashion. But her ears were alert to catch a conversation in which she was forgotten. “I’ve stood it to the last possible instant!” declared Kit, savagely. “Anne will not see me. She shall! Have I no rights?” “Don’t you think, Kit, dear, she is afraid to see you?” Joan suggested. “If she will not marry you, isn’t it better to avoid unnecessary pain? Poor Anne shows that she already has all that she can endure.” “Poor Anne has no right to be enduring it,” retorted Kit. “I will see her; I must! What do you say, Antony?” “I say I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, and I don’t know how I’d play up if I were, but the right thing is to get out and not torture a girl who is trying to be square, who loves you all the time, good old Kit,” said Antony. “Well, if you call that being square, I don’t,” declared Kit. “She’s got it all twisted. I don’t mean to torture her, you know well enough, except to talk it out once; we’ve got to! I never had a word with her except that one time when we found out how we both felt, and then what was it? We were taken off our feet; couldn’t talk! I want to put it up to her as temperately as I can. Then if she decides against me, all right; I go. And I mean to listen fairly to her arguments. But I don’t go till that is done. I realize that it’s hard to judge a question on which your own happiness hinges, but it doesn’t seem to me right to Latham for Anne to marry him. Putting me out of it, it doesn’t seem right to Latham. If he knew that Anne loved me, not him--wanted to marry me, not him--would he let her keep her promise to him? Of course he wouldn’t! So it doesn’t seem fair to him to go on with it. Maybe that’s sophistry; I’m sure I can’t tell! But I do know that I don’t feel as though I could go on living if Anne marries Latham.” Kit’s head went down on his arms with a movement of such despair that little Anne was frightened.