“You do not feel too perturbed to work to-day?” Richard suggested when Anne followed him to the living room a few minutes later. There was no note of regret in his voice now. “Dear me, no!” laughed Anne. “I feel more like work than usual; there is a load rolled off, isn’t there?” Anne had set down her problem in accurate figures, and had solved it. There was nothing in the way of her making Richard as happy as she could make him, except selfishness. She wanted the love that had not come to her, which was to her the ideal approach to marriage. This ideal was the true one, but her case was altered by circumstances. First of all, there was no one whom she loved better than Richard Latham. If there were, she could not have been untrue to that love, whether or not it led to joy. Richard Latham was not only a man to be honoured for his genius, pitied for his blindness, but he was a man to be loved for himself. Rarely would any woman find in one person the qualities which he united in himself; the manliness with the delicacy; the tenderness with the courage; the unbending austerity with the unfailing mercy. He could love a woman as few men could love one; he would idealize her while protecting her; serve her in all humility, yet expect from her all the goodness and strength that was in her. Anne had decided that if Richard really were giving her this power and wanted her, it was not for her to refuse his wealth, nor further impoverish one who had been so bereft. Having reached her decision, she went serenely on her way, characteristically debating it no more; ready to give if the demand were made, desiring nothing except not to fail either Richard or herself. This morning Richard resumed the dictation of his third act; Anne, pen in hand, set down the cabalistic signs which Richard had once accused of signifying more than he could produce. Suddenly she paused, her pen suspended, a shocked expression on her face. “But, Mr. Latham, why are you saying this?” she cried. “What are you doing with this act? This dialogue? You are turning it all wrong!” “No,” said Richard. “I am not going to follow my first plan. Our friend, the hero, is not to be made happy, after all! I am separating him from his beloved. They are not to marry, as we meant them to. It won’t affect the two preceding acts; it will merely make another play of it, perhaps a sadder one, but not a weaker one--better, I think. Don’t you approve?”