Sweetie-weet put his head on one side, and chirped interrogatively. In his judgment, the silence had lasted sufficiently long. Miss Ann dried her eyes, making an effort to control her emotion. Then she spoke, in a voice which still trembled. "Dearest child," she said, "I want you _just_ to cover this book for me. Emma has offered to do it, several times, but I said: 'No, Emma. We must keep it for Miss Christobel. I do not know _what_ she would say to you, if you took to covering my books!' Emma is a good soul, and willing; but has not the _mind_ and _method_ required to cover a book properly. If you will _just_ run up to my room, dear child, you will find a neat piece of whity-brown paper laid aside on purpose.... Hush, Sweetie-weet! Christobel knows you are pleased to see her.... It is either on the ottoman behind the screen, or in the top left-hand drawer of the mahogany chest, between the window and the fireplace. Ah, how much we have come through, during the last twenty-four hours! The scissors, dear Love, are hanging by black tape from a nail in the store-room. You require a large and _common_ pair for cutting brown paper. How truly wonderful are the ways of Providence, dear Christobel! The paste is in the little cupboard under the stairs." When Miss Charteris had finished covering the book, having bent upon it all the _mind_ and _method_ it required, she forestalled the setting of another task, by saying firmly: "I want an important talk now, please. Ann, are you sure you told your brother that I had cared for him for years?" "Darling, dear Kenrick was so _diffident_; so unable to realize his own powers of _attraction_; so----" "Do you think it was fair toward a woman, even if it were true, to tell a man who had never asked her love, that that love has long been his?" "Sweet child, how crudely you put it! I merely _hinted, whispered_; gave the most _delicate_ indications of what I knew to be your feeling. For you _do_ love my brother; do you not, dear Christobel?" "I think," said Miss Charteris, slowly, weighing each word; "I think I love the Professor as a woman loves a book." There was a moment of tense silence in Miss Ann's drawing-room. Christobel Charteris looked straight before her, a stern light upon her face, as of one confronted on the path of duty by the clear shining of the mirror of self-revelation. Into Miss Ann's pale blue eyes shot a gleam of nervous anxiety. Sweetie-weet chirped, interrogatively. Then Miss Ann, recovering, clasped her hands. "Ah, what a beautiful definition!" she said. "What _could_ be more pure, more perfect?" Miss Charteris knew a love of a very different kind, which was absolutely pure, and altogether perfect. But that was the love she had put from her. "A woman could hardly marry a book," she said.