Where he sat Kit could not help catching every movement that Richard made. They were not many: Richard sat with his head resting against the back of his chair, his voice flowing steadily on, rising and falling so expressively that, though he could not hear the words, Kit found its cadences dramatic, interesting. The poet’s slender hands moved ceaselessly, the long fingers rapidly opening, closing, pointing, erect or drooping, but otherwise he was motionless. The look that passed over Richard’s face at intervals when he turned his blind eyes upon Anne; the tone with which he sometimes asked a question that Kit fancied was extraneous to the dictation, gradually destroyed whatever slight hope had lingered. At last Richard straightened himself, and Anne began gathering up her papers, laying one upon another. Richard held out his hands with a smile that told Kit all that there was to tell. He saw Anne’s lips move, though her voice did not reach him, and Richard jumped up to hasten to the door. “Why, Christopher Carrington!” Richard cried, boyishly. “What are you doing here? Come in, come in! Glad to see you.” Kit let the poet shake his limp hand, though Kit’s tight grasp was famous. “Good morning, Miss Dallas,” Kit said, and Anne greeted him with the sweet cordiality that had always been one of her chief charms. “It was silly of me to wait,” Kit said, “but that’s a nice step to sit on! Now it’s too late for me to do more than say I’m going.” “Oh, but we have more than that to say to you!” protested Richard. “We’ve had a great morning, Kit! We’ve done the third act. And it’s a great third act, if I do say it as shouldn’t! We’ve made our notes on it these past two days and to-day we’ve written it. I needn’t hesitate to say it’s great, either: Anne did it. She saved it from being a sad third act; she changed the play back to our first idea of it. I was going to spoil it!” “You don’t as a rule,” Kit managed to say; he had had too much of the “we” to answer easily. “There is no rule, Kit, my son!” Richard laughed. “There is no rule, no precedent, because there is no old me! There’s not even English grammar left of my old self, you see! All the world is new. Do you know that this is _Anne_ now?” He held out his hands to Anne and she came over to him and laid her own hands into his. She was pale, her eyes cast down, her lips parted as if she were breathing quickly; Kit saw her breast rise and fall. He could not guess that Anne was wondering why she found her new part almost impossible to play. She had been thankful to find herself peacefully, unemotionally happy since she had made Richard ecstatically happy, but now the situation crushed her. Kit made an attempt to answer, but Richard forestalled him.