At the desk, alone in the room, sat a young girl--Anne Dallas. Here she prepared her notes and carried them away to write them out where the clatter of a typewriter could not penetrate this room. All soft browns was this Anne, hair, eyes, even the tint of her beautiful skin, warmly pale, clear, but of a shade that suggested a page that had lain under the sun’s rays. Her hair covered her shapely head across the back from crown to neck, from ear to ear; she wore it parted and coiled in the only way its masses allowed her to treat it. There was no attempt at coquetry in the simplicity of her dress, yet no carefully thought out costume could have more perfectly adorned her, nor made her more harmonious to the room, for girl and room were each a foil to the other. She wrote rapidly, happily humming to herself a slight air that did not get in the way of her thoughts; she smiled as she followed the balanced phrases in which Richard Latham had developed an idea that demanded the best of the language. It was said that Latham used English as no American now used it, that he was the master of a style that could not be taught. He came into the room as Anne Dallas began another page of her copy. She rose to greet him, but did not move toward him. She had learned that he liked to go about without anything to remind him of his misfortune. He knew every inch of this room perfectly, literally by heart, for he had himself designed it before he had been stricken. He often went straight to the right shelf and laid his hand upon the book that he wanted. “Good morning, Miss Dallas,” he said. “‛Richard and Robin were two lazy men!’ I’ll warrant that’s what you were thinking, and that Richard had not cured himself of ‛lying in bed till the clock struck ten.’” “More likely you were tramping before the clock struck five!” cried Anne.