Helen turned off the light to undress in the dark; she did not like to see herself in the mirror just then.
Kit had promised to bring a book from his boyhood’s library, containing illustrations of Canadian winter sports, to young Peter Barkley on the following day.
He found Anne Dallas there, in the deep window seat with little Anne. The smoothly coiled masses of dark hair bent over the bobbed, bright ribbon-tied darker hair, as the grown-up Anne fitted a worldly pink dancing gown on the little Anne’s big doll whose serious-minded name was Scholastica.
Kitca, larger and apparently whiter, sat on Anne Dallas’s shoulder, her round Christmas-card face set off by a complex blue satin ribbon bow that formed its background from ear to ear. It was a pretty picture, Kit thought, as he stood for an instant before he was discovered, looking at it.
He had so completely given up Anne, even excluding thoughts of her as honour compelled, that he looked at her quietly with a slight tightening around his heart, a little quickening of his breath—but not with the perturbation which the sight of her had aroused when he was free to allow himself to go out to her. Anne’s smile was sweetly friendly, her eyes unclouded as she looked up and greeted him.
“Are you still in Cleavedge?” she asked. “Mr. Latham was wondering the other day. Are you well? You look tired.”
Kit blushed. He had not slept well; he could not bear to recall Helen in this maidenly presence.
“I’m all right, thanks: perhaps a little sleepy. I’m going to see Mr. Latham soon. How about the play?” Kit asked.
“He has done a great deal of the fourth act; almost all of it. There is a famous manager coming to lunch with Mr. Latham, so I ran away. I don’t want to meet him, and Mr. Latham admitted that I couldn’t talk to him,” Anne laughed, and Kit joined her, thinking this were likely to be true.