“Will you take this book to Peter, little Anne?” Kit asked. “Tell him I’ve marked the pages.”
Little Anne sped away with the book and Kit still stood by the table, fluttering magazine pages, while Anne still sat in the deep window seat, fondling Kitca.
There was nothing to explain it, but with the going of little Anne something had come. There was between Anne and Kit constraint, unforeseen, oppressive. Nothing like it had happened before; each was conscious of it now, each wondered at it, was powerless against it. They had not been alone together since Anne had promised to marry Richard. Now they did not look at each other; for a while they could not. Then Kit raised his eyes and met Anne’s, dilated, marvelling, suffused with light, fixed on his. They gazed at each other utterly unconscious of everything, mastered by a feeling that burned in the blue and the brown eyes, mutually calling and answering.
“Anne, I love you! I love you! And you love me!” Kit did not know that he spoke till the words were uttered, never to be unsaid.
Anne did not speak, except with her eyes, and they were illumined.
“Anne, think of it! You love me! I love you!” repeated Kit, and crossed to her.
Then Anne recovered sufficiently to remember. She clasped her throat with both hands and fear drove the light from her eyes.
“No, no, no! Richard!” she whispered.
Little Anne came back, but she stopped short in the doorway, not understanding what she saw, but enthralled by it. Neither Anne nor Kit knew that she was there.
“Richard—can’t be helped!” said Kit, fiercely. “How did we know this? You don’t love him; you love me! You didn’t know that; neither did I. I knew that I loved you, but—well, yes! Once I did feel sure that you loved me, but when you were going to marry Richard Latham I gave in, thought I was mistaken. Now you are mine, Anne, Anne!”