Little Anne Berkley was dangerously ill. Pneumonia had developed on the second day after her pitiful penance, and, little-Anne-like, she was having it hard. Anne Dallas and Richard Latham were surprised to find what a large place in their days and hearts the child had filled. The thin little body as it lay prostrate in its fight for life cast a shadow over the house in Latham Street. His anxiety stimulated Richard to better work, but in Anne’s mind fear for little Anne aggregated to her personal anxiety and benumbed her further. The world had grown still, hushed by anxiety; she was feeling so intensely that she seemed not to feel. Nor did the shadow of little Anne’s suffering darken only the poet’s house. Kit was so afflicted by her danger that he hovered constantly around the Berkley door, getting bulletins many times a day, bringing preposterous gifts to the child who could not see them. Once, when she was sleeping, Mrs. Berkley took Kit up to look at her. She lay with a disreputable doll beside her, her face so pinched, her breathing so laboured, the look of suffering, of imminent death so stamped upon her that Kit groaned aloud. Mrs. Berkley led him away as little Anne stirred. “It’s bad, Kit, dear, but we are hoping and praying,” she said with such a brave smile that when Kit got down to where Antony Paul was waiting for him he broke down. Peter sat with his head in his hands, bowed over his knees. He looked up fiercely as he heard Kit sob. “She isn’t your little sister. How do you suppose I feel?” he demanded. “There never was such a kid as Anne. Joan isn’t in the same class, Antony, no matter what you say. More brains than all the other children in town put together, and never a fresh thing about her; sweet, obedient, pious! And I wouldn’t forgive her for a clever little trick that I ought to have enjoyed; yes, been proud to think she was smart enough to work it! Wouldn’t kiss her! Oh, my Lord! Anne, Anne! Told her to go stand in the river for penance, when she was so sorry, the little saint! Wouldn’t kiss her!” Down went Peter’s head again and his shoulders heaved. “See here, old chap, we haven’t lost her yet. You know what to do. Get out and do it. I believe she’ll be given back to us,” said Antony, his arm laid across poor Peter as tenderly as a woman’s. Kit watched and wondered, but Peter understood Antony. He drew his arm across his eyes, got his cap, and went out without a word. Kit went miserably home. Aside from his sense of personal loss, it seemed to him unbearable that a child so young, so vital as little Anne should die. He had not meditated so profoundly on the mysteries of life in all the brief time that he had lived it as he found himself doing on his way home that afternoon. He distinctly shrank from going into the metallic brightness of his aunt and Helen’s presence from the sublime patience that he divined in Mrs. Berkley, and the solemnity of little Anne, clothed in the mystery of suffering and death.