“I wanted to do something, and Mr. Latham was kind enough to let me work for him. My home is near New York.” “Are you alone in the world, such a pretty child as you?” Miss Carrington’s tone expressed sympathy. “I have a few cousins; no one else,” said Anne. She looked up confidingly into the keen eyes above her. “The war was hard on me. No, not a personal grief; I lost no one, there was no one in it that I dearly loved,” she anticipated Miss Carrington’s question. “But it made me feel that everything I knew wasn’t so, and the bleakness----” She checked herself with a shudder. “But after that I saw that everything that I had known was a thousand times truer than I had thought it was. I suppose everyone went through that experience, but to each of us it was like being born, wasn’t it?” “Ah!” murmured Miss Carrington, emphatically but discreetly. She had not known this melding with impersonal agony. “Oh, yes, of course it was what we all felt,” Anne hastily disclaimed difference between herself and the rest of the world. “Then I wanted to do something in this burdened world, even though peace, of a sort, had come.” “So you help a blind poet? How wonderfully beautiful,” said Miss Carrington, gently. “You are not half known; we all took you for his paid secretary.” “Oh, so I am, I am!” cried Anne, distressed. “Did I convey anything else? Mr. Latham is not an object of charity. I am in his employ. But--well--I want to do my best for his work, and”--she laughed shyly, but with pretty mischief, that did not hide her pity for Richard--“I am only his eyeglasses, but I don’t want the glasses to pinch, you see?” “I see,” assented Miss Carrington. “You mean, since someone must serve him in lieu of his lost eyes, you want to see to it that it is someone devoted to him. I still think it is wonderful. How did you hear of him, or he of you?” “There was an artist here last summer who is Mr. Latham’s closest friend. He is a very good artist----” “Edwin Wilberforce?” interrupted Miss Carrington. “Decidedly he is. I would not speak so temperately of him; he is a famous and great painter. Did he find you for his friend?” “He---- Yes,” said Anne. Apparently she was going to say more, but thought better of it. “He told Mr. Latham of me, after he had written me about Mr. Latham, so it was arranged through him that I was to come, and here I am.” “A most fortunate arrangement,” said Miss Carrington. “I never saw Richard Latham look so alive, so happy, so---- My dear, he is a charming man! I am a selfish woman; people who reach my age through years of solitude are likely to be, but to be so young, with your mind, your heart to devote to a life so highly endowed, yet so denied, is a lot that guardian angels might envy! Richard Latham can never again be pitied, having you.”