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“Help,” Kit said, softly.

“Well, at least not grow inward,” Anne admitted. “That’s all. I couldn’t explain all this to Miss Carrington. It does sound silly, but that’s only because I’m not able to do important work. It wouldn’t sound foolish if I were going to—what was it that little Anne was saying to you? Be a Carmelite? Something like that, you know.”

She looked up at Kit with her brown eyes shy and abashed, but he did not seem to consider her silly.

“To be eyes to the blind, to help a poet write what Mr. Latham writes—or I hear that he does; I don’t honestly know much about it yet—seems to me pretty fine,” he said. “Aunt Anne told me that the painter, Wilberforce, got you to undertake Latham.”

“Yes,” Anne assented. “Now, Mr. Carrington, why were you so blue when you came this afternoon? Do you want to ‛trade,’ as children say? I told you my secret.”

“Oh, how can I?” Kit blushed to his hair. “All that I could tell you would sound like a spoiled, selfish kid! Aunt Anne has a guest coming, a young lady, and I’ve got to see it through, and I hate it! That’s about all.” Kit checked the violence with which he had brought out the word “hate,” and ended with a modification of the truth.