“Well, I don’t know. My recollection is that you serve into another’s court, which is not to our liking in this case. I think I mean pick him up; you do that with racquets, don’t you? I don’t know why I should insist on a tennis term! The whole thing, Helen, is that you are to be nice to my boy, and wisely nice. You will slip along, pussy-footed, your hand on the leader. I believe, from my experience with youngsters, that Kit will learn to lean upon your satisfying comradeship. It can’t be more than a fancy for the Dallas girl. He was ready supplied with ideals and she stood convenient, as a sort of rack, to hang them on. That’s the explanation of most first love. No harm done, my dear! Except that it is keeping us up, and that is harmful to me at my age! Unless there’s something going on, and then tiny hours don’t harm me!” The dauntless old lady laughed and went into the house, Helen following with her forgotten knitting bag. Kit presented himself at breakfast with the marks of misery on his face. He was not used to unhappiness; aside from the actual pain, the discomfort of its friction hurt him, as a chain galls in addition to its weight. He did not know how to adjust himself to what had happened. He had the good sense to see that the only thing for him to do was to occupy himself with something that demanded genuine effort of body and mind. “I’ve got to get at something that I can’t foozle over,” is the way he put it to himself. He had amused himself so far through life successfully, but he instinctively realized that entertainment did not entertain, except when one’s light-heartedness might dispense with it. Helen and Miss Carrington had made a compact to be unconscious of Kit’s depression. At breakfast Helen talked happily of inconsequent matters, not to Kit, yet not excluding him; she did not suggest his sharing any part of that day with her; instead, she announced plans for herself that excluded him. He was grateful for what he mistook for Helen’s unintentional mercy to him and rewarded her with a friendly smile as he left the dining room. He had added to his advice to himself while dressing the sane counsel not to show it if he felt sore, and not to be a grouch. The first necessity upon him was to make an errand to Richard Latham’s house to see for himself. There were moments when he did not believe that what he had heard was true, yet at every moment he was surer that it was true. He found work going on so briskly in the poet’s room that, like little Anne on an earlier day, he bestowed himself outside the window to wait. Anne waved her hand, the pen in it, to him, but Richard did not know that he was there.