e door. Soon, as Tenney,
still motionless there by the stove, seemed mutely accusing her, mutely
imploring her not to be cruel, she did turn and look at him. The thought
of Raven was uppermost in her mind. It had been there every minute since
she had gone into his house in the woods, but now it roused
compellingly, stronger than even her present apprehension. Most of all,
she was penetrated by a wonder almost greater than any emotion she had
ever felt, at having laid before him at once and without persuasion, the
story of her life. Why should she have told him? She would have said no
decent woman could betray her husband to another man. It was entirely
mysterious, and she gave it up. But there was, behind the wonder, a
dazzling sense that he was different. As he had told her that strange
thing she hardly dared think of now, because it seemed as if she must
have misunderstood him--the thing about her looking so good and
wonderful when he came upon her--so he, in his kindness and compassion,
his implication of assuming a mysterious responsibility for her, seemed
unbelievably good, not a citizen of this bleak neighborhood--or even the
world (her mind, though stumblingly, ran as far as that) and, more
astounding still, the real miracle was that he had been sent for this:
to save her. And at that moment of dazed reflection, it all meant the
passionate necessity of obeying him. He had bade her show her husband
how she loved him. Seeing the man was jealous, he had pitied him.
Perhaps she had not thought, since these last apprehensive days with
Tenney, whether she loved him or not. He had simply, at the times of
recurrent tragedy, been the terror within the house, and she had lived a
life of breathless consecration to the one task of saving the child. Did
she love him? Raven had assumed she did, and in her devotion to him she
must, in some form, obey. Almost it seemed to her there would be shame
in not loving her husband, if Raven expected it of her. None of these
things were formulated in her mind. They were only shadowy impulses,
like the forces of nature, persuading, impelling her. She had no words;
she had scarcely, as to the abstractions she dimly felt and never saw,
any reasoned thought. But she did have an unrecognized life of the
emotions, and this was surging in her now.

She stood for a second looking at Tenney, the distended beauty of her
eyes like a question, a challenge. She seemed, though this neither of
them coul