“Kit,” she began, her voice deep with love and longing, “it is costing me so much that in simple mercy you must never again add to it by seeking me. After a while we will be friends--meet as friends. Always we shall be friends, even before we may safely meet. That is a great word were we not longing to speak another, greater word, that is forbidden us. I shall marry Richard and do my best to love him as a wife should, as any one who knew him would love him, one would think, best of all! Listen to me, dear: If you were a man who in sober, sane choice could want me to break my promise to this man, I should never have loved you. Shall we be selfish, Kit, cruel, false, trying to justify ourselves with pretty words? Kit, you are so dear to me that I want to help you to keep your honour bright! I should not have seen you to-day but that I knew in seeing you I could help you to see something far greater than I. I can’t cure your grief, Kit, your lonely longing, nor my own! For a time we must suffer. But I know we shall win out, because we are doing our best. I came to beg you to make the renunciation that is the true, manly course. I don’t want you to do right only because I stand by my word. Say to me--and mean it, Kit, because in compelling your will to this you will gain peace of mind--say to me: ‛Anne, keep your word to Richard Latham and God bless you! I would not have you make me happy by defrauding him.’ Tell me this, Kit; tell me you see it is right!” Kit stood silent beside her, his head bowed, his hands clinching and relaxing. The tiny waves of the river’s slow flow lapped softly on the white sand; a sparrow emphasized the stillness with his lovely brief song. “It is right, Anne,” poor Kit said at last. “And”--Anne put out her hands to him almost as a mother would put out her hands to the child who feared to walk--“And I don’t want you to make me happy by defrauding Richard Latham. Marry him, Anne, Anne, Anne, my darling, marry him! And God bless and keep you, as He surely does!” Kit threw back his head, holding both her hands crushed in his. Anne’s face was alight with triumph; her eyes glowed and warmed Kit’s heart. “I’ll be all right. This is right,” Kit said. “I’ve been crazed, Anne, but don’t worry over me; I’ll be all right, little Captain!” “Oh, you blessed boy!” cried Anne in spite of herself. Gently she disengaged her hands. “It’s a lot to be able to think of each other in the way we now shall.” “I’d better take you back again. Oh, Anne, I was ready with arguments that you never could have answered, and I haven’t spoken one of them! Isn’t there another side? Couldn’t you hear me, even yet? I don’t know what you did to me, but all my arguments seemed answered when you began to speak.”