“It will never do for me to be neurasthenic as well as blind,” he said, cheerfully. “I suspect I’m staying indoors too much; a man should go hay-making--when the sun shines! I’ll fetch the book I have in mind for to-day’s reading--unless you have something you’d prefer?” He stepped quickly across the room, went to the poetry shelves, stooped, and took from the middle shelf a volume which he slapped on his left hand, brushed it across the top, and brought it to Anne. “Suit you? Are you in the mood for it?” he asked. It was Dante in the prose translation. Anne looked at it and smiled up at him. “Just in the mood for it,” she said. “But I’d like to read the ‛Paradise’--or would you rather ‛begin at the beginning,’ as children say?” “No, indeed, I’d rather hear ‛Paradise’ myself,” Richard Latham said, and resumed his chair, pulling his smoking table up to it. “It’s your one secretarial fault, Miss Dallas: you are not a linguist. I’ve a fine old tooled copy of Dante, Italian. I’d like to teach you Italian. I lived over there a good while. Perhaps we may take up----” He broke off sharply. “I beg your pardon, Miss Dallas; I’m delaying you.” Anne opened the volume, once more hurt and puzzled. Richard Latham was always so equable, so friendly toward her that she could not understand this new mood. The tone of his last words relegated her to the unbridgable distance of his hired secretary. Anne began to read at the third book, the “Paradise.” Her voice was troubled at first, but Richard smoked rapidly, apparently unconscious of it, he whose ear was ordinarily quick to hear a note of fatigue in her voice. Anne loved beauty, and in a few moments she had forgotten herself in Dante’s vision; a little longer and she forgot her listener, which was far more. She read on and on until at last Richard put out his hand to check her. “You are thirsty,” he said in the old gentle way to which Anne was accustomed. “And it is one o’clock. The sun is around on the other side; that means past noon. We shall not lunch till two to-day; I told Stetson to have a carriage here at three. We are going to have a real holiday, you and I. Stetson is of the party in case I feel like walking in unfamiliar places and need his arm. So put up your book and rest till luncheon.” “How delightful, Mr. Latham!” cried Anne. “I rarely drive.” “You are a little girl still, my helpful secretary! How old did you tell me you were?” Richard asked, well-pleased by her pleasure. Anne arose and dropped a curtsy. Richard felt the motion of her swaying body and laughed at her. “I am twenty-two, please, sir!” she said in a thin treble. “But I hope to be more.”