“One does when one has been where they are,” she said, lightly kissing Miss Carrington’s soft white hair. Her breath was not distinguishable in that kiss.
Kit went to his room conscious of having spent a delightful evening. Helen had treated him in the one way that he could have enjoyed; he was grateful to her for having set him at ease, for banishing a dread for which, he was convinced, she was in no degree responsible. Never before had Kit liked Helen Abercrombie as well as to-night.
CHAPTER VII
The Poet’s Corner
IN the quiet room, with the sunlight shaded, for the day was warm, Anne Dallas bent over her writing table, absorbed in her work. Richard Latham sat opposite her, dictating slowly, his head resting on his hand, his face turned toward her. If he could have seen one would have said that he was watching Anne, and even though his eyes were sightless the word was not unsuitable. He was so keenly conscious of her movements, and his sensitive mind was so intent upon her, that he perceived her almost as if he saw her.
Yet this vision of Anne helped rather than hindered the dictation of the lines of his play. That her permeation of his thoughts did not get in the way of his developing the imaginary people whom his brain was moving about like puppets, said as nothing else could say how one with him she was, how completely, how selflessly she answered to his need.
Richard Latham was writing a play. It was both comedy and tragedy, as most real dramas are; it was realism, yet idealized as are all lives which are worth living. It was that day reaching the end of its second act.
No one but Anne Dallas had yet heard a line of it. She took it from Richard’s lips as it formed in his poet’s mind, feeling that she was a part of something unspeakably great; it gave her at once a sense of utter isolation and at the same time a feeling that she was in the midst of crowding splendours which lay beyond the bounds of daily events and their actors.
Anne wondered while she waited for Richard to think out something that he wanted to express exactly, why it was she to whom this experience had fallen. Anne Dallas had not an undue opinion of Anne Dallas. She considered herself one of the majority of average people, not exceeding in face, mind, nor any way, hosts of girls correctly, but tamely, described as “nice girls.” Yet it was she and none of the others who was taking down this play to-day, these words and pictures and characters so beautiful that she felt sure that they would live on long after she had grown old and died.
It was after three, and the rule was that work stopped at three, but Richard was dictating the last lines of the second act. It was tense with emotion, complex in situation, and many of the loveliest lines so far in the play were in this scene. It had not occurred to the workers to think of time.