d at him.

"Not go back to him?" she repeated. "Why, I've got to go back to him.
I've got to go home. Where do you expect I'm goin', if I don't go home?"

"Haven't you any people?" Raven asked her. "Can't you go to them?"

She laughed a little, softly, showing fine white teeth. The spell of her
beauty was moving to him. He might never, he thought, have noticed her
at all in other circumstances, if he had not seen her there in the woods
and felt her need knock at his heart with the imperative summons of the
outraged maternal. Was this the feeling rising in him that had made his
mother's servitude to his father so sickening in those years gone by?
Was the old string still throbbing? Did it need but a woman's hand to
play upon it? And yet must he not have noted her, wherever they had met?
Would not any man?

"I've got four brothers," she said. "They'd laugh at me. They'd tell me
I'd married well an' got a better home than any of them could scrape
together if they begun at the beginnin' an' lived their lives over.
There's nothin' in Isr'el Tenney to be afraid of, they'd tell me. And
there ain't--for them."

"No," said Raven quietly. He felt an intense desire to feel his way,
make no mistakes, run no risk of shutting off her confidence. "It's a
different thing for you."

Now she turned her face more fully upon him, in a challenging surprise.

"Why," she said, "I ain't afraid--except for him."

By the smallest motion of her hand she indicated the child, who was now,
in sudden sleepiness, toppling back against the wall.

"Put him up here," said Raven, indicating the couch.

He opened the folded rug and held it until she had disposed the little
lax figure among the pillows. Then she took the rug from him and covered
the child, with quick, capable movements of her beautiful worn hands.
Raven, watching her, felt a clutch at his throat. Surely there was
nothing in the known world of plastic action so wonderful as these
movements of mothers' hands in their work of easing a child. With a last
quick touch on the rug, drawing it slightly away from the baby cheek,
she returned to her chair, and Raven again took his. He was afraid lest
she repent her open-mindedness toward him and talk no more. But she was
looking at him earnestly. It was evidently a part of her precautionary
foresight that he should know. Did she think he could help her? His
blood quickened at the thought. It seemed enough to have lived for, in
so brutal a w