d you had the shack repaired so's to write
your books."

Raven smiled. Books seemed far removed from this naked face of life.

"I'm not writing books now," he said. "I'm just hanging round. I may go
over and see your husband, ask him to do some work for me."

The quick look of alarm ran into her face.

"Oh," she breathed, "you won't----"

"No," he answered steadily, "I won't say a word about you. Of course I
sha'n't. And I won't to anybody."

"An'," she broke in tumultuously, "if you should see me--oh, it's an
awful thing to say, after what you've done for me this day--but you
won't act as if you ever see me before?"

That was the only wisdom, Raven saw, but a band seemed to tighten about
his heart. Deny her before men, she whom he had not yet untangled from
the rapt vision of their meeting?

"No," he said, "I won't even look at you. Now I'm going. I'll loosen up
the stone."

She rose to her imposing height and came to him where he stood, his hand
on the latch. Her eyes brimmed. In the one glance he had of her, he
thought such extremity of gratitude might, in another instant, break in
a flood of words.

"Go back," he said, "where nobody can see you when I open the door.
Jerry may have taken a notion to come up."

She turned obediently and he did not look at her again. He opened the
door and stepped out. The stone was there beside the larger one below
the sill. He bent and wrenched it up from the ground where the frost was
holding it, and with such unregarding force that the edges hurt his
hands. He smiled a little at the savage satisfaction of the act,
wondering if this was how Tenney felt when he smashed away at the wood.
Then he remembered that the key was inside, tapped on the door, opened
it and spoke to her:

"You'd better lock the door. Keep it locked till you go."

She was sitting before the fire, her head bent almost to her knee, her
face in her hands. He closed the door and waited until he heard her step
and the turning of the key. Then he strode out into the logging road and
down the slope. One certainty surged and trembled in him: that he had
never been so sorry for anybody in his life.

X

Raven, determinedly shedding his emotion, plunged fast down the hill and
into the house where Charlotte was busy in a steam of fragrances from
stove and cooking table and Jerry sat smoothing an axe helve.

"See here," said Raven, pulling off his gloves and advancing to the
stove, where Jerry, l