Kit’s voice had been getting more unsteady; it stopped altogether and he dropped his face into his hands. Anne was crying softly, but Richard said, though the effort was audible: “I’ve been told they often recover, those who receive Extreme Unction. I am unable to believe that little Anne will die. Something tells me that she is coming here one of these fine summer days to tell us extraordinary things of her fight with death, just as she has so often said strange things of her experiences in life. We won’t grieve till we must, dear Kit, and dear other Anne. I am hopeful.” “Poets have visions withheld from us. We will trust this poet and hope!” said Anne, trying to smile. “I wonder why this slender little creature has so deeply entered our hearts? It really seems to me that I could not bear to see little Anne lying dead.” “I only know that she has crawled into our hearts,” said Kit. He went away comforted. Not only was Richard Latham’s hopefulness a relief when he had felt that little Anne was doomed, but in an intangible way it seemed to Kit that Anne Dallas had drawn near to him, that her tears had been shed so close to him that he had wiped them away, comforting her. It was not a reasonable feeling, but reason and feeling are often opposed terms. In their love for this little child he and Anne were one. How easily that oneness might go further! Kit’s simplicity accepted the oneness and rested upon it. His was a nature inclined to believe in all that was good, even in good things coming to him. And perhaps the impression of sympathy was not mistaken, whatever might come of it. He slept little that night. The greater part of it he spent in a chair at the window, gazing out on the silent world, at the watching stars. It seemed to him now like something inconceivably solemn, rather than sad, that little Anne might have passed out from this visible beauty. He had only the vaguest ideas of what the sacraments which the child had received meant, but “anointing for death” had a sound as awesome as the sweep of Azrael’s wings. It lifted the child beyond the little creature whom he had known and loved, the precocious, innocent, elfin, spiritual child, full of contradictory charm; she was now become merely a soul, a passing soul, set apart and chosen to know at the dawn of life all that man had yearned to fathom. He no longer cared to keep her. It was as if it were too stupendous a matter for human desire to interfere in it, that little Anne must be left alone to go on or come back, the decision untrammelled. Kit’s thoughts turned calmly to Anne Dallas; they partook of the mood wrought by little Anne’s apotheosis. Anne Dallas loved him! Wonderful, impossible once to have believed as this was, it seemed to Kit quite certain. He did not know why, he could not have given a reason for this certainty, but when one knows a thing beyond question it would be absurd to ask for proof.