To help her, there would be Helen's visit, and there was her friendship with Professor Parkhill.

It was not strange, considering all the circumstances, that the young woman should give her time more generously than ever to the only person in the neighborhood, except Patches, perhaps, who she felt could understand and appreciate her desires for that higher life of which even her own parents were ignorant.
And the professor did understand her fully.

He told her so many times each day.

Had he not given all the years of his little life to the study of those refining and spiritualizing truths that are so far above the comprehension of the base and ignoble common herd?
Indeed, he understood her language; he understood fully, why the sordid, brutal materialism of her crude and uncultured environment so repulsed and disgusted her.

He understood, more fully than Kitty herself, in fact, and explained to her clearly, that her desires for the higher intellectual and spiritual life were born of her own rare gifts, and evidenced beyond all question the fineness and delicacy of her nature.