“Oh, wasn’t it right to come? Was it a sin to tell you? Was it a sin? I never did a sin that made any one sick when they were so well before! Was it a sin?” cried little Anne, terror-stricken by the result of her mission. “It was--just right--little Anne! I’m--delighted--to know. But I’m a little--a little--surprised, you see. Please, go, dear little Anne!” Richard managed to say. Little Anne went. At the gate she looked back. Richard Latham sat as she had left him. The garden looked more than usually beautiful, peaceful. Child as she was she felt the solemnity of the bowed figure of the blind poet, alone among his flowers. In the meantime, Anne had gone on and had met Kit coming toward her down shady Latham Street. She had not given him her hand; he had turned and joined her with but the slightest murmur of greeting. They made no attempt to talk as they went out toward the river. Kit directed their course away from the spot to which he and Helen had walked on that recent afternoon. They came to a pretty place where the bank sloped down under willows, and where there was a bit of white, sandy beach. “No use going farther, Anne,” said Kit, peremptorily. “I want to know what you mean to do about it? I have a right to know.” “You already know,” said Anne, as sternly as he. “I have told you all that there is to say. In less than three months I shall marry Richard Latham. That sums up all that I could say to you, Kit.” “But I love you! You have no idea how I want you, love you!” cried Kit. “And that you’re not to say to me!” said Anne with a stern monotony of voice, with which she bridled her pain as she saw the change in Kit’s sunny face. “It is easy for you. You don’t care, after all! I suppose women can’t love as a man does,” said Kit. An expression of adoring love and pity flitted over Anne’s face. Then it was gone, and she said: “There is no profit in that sort of recrimination, you know. The instrument for measuring and comparing mental suffering has not been invented. It is hard enough for me. Be satisfied of that! Do you want me to be miserable?” Suddenly she let herself go, as if she deliberately threw away reserve.