Nan curtly.

"Not the beastly old thing that starts before light?"

She nodded.

"What for?"

"To get ahead of them," she answered, still curtly.

"Them? Who?"

"Dick and his mother and Doctor Brooke."

"Dick and Amelia? What's Amelia on here for?"

He had half expected her and yet, in the new turmoil about him, he had
actually forgotten she might come.

"Because Dick sent her your letter. They both assume you've broken down,
and she's called in an alienist to come up here and eye you over, and
Dick's pretty sick over the whole business; so he's coming along, too.
He was prepared for mother, I fancy, but not the alienist."

"But what's it all for?"

"Why, you know, Rookie. You've broken down."

Raven stared at her. Then he laughed.

"Well," he said, "let 'em come. Charlotte'll give 'em some dinner and
they can look at the mountain and go back on the six to-night."

"That's precisely what they won't do," said Nan, her lips tightening.
"At least your sister. She's going to stay."

"The deuce she is," said Raven. "What for?"

Then Nan did break out of the stiffness that seemed to have held her
like an armor since the momentary setback of her coming. Her own laugh
ran over her face and creased it into delighted merriment.

"Why, don't you see?" she asked him. "To brighten your life."

Raven's eyes met hers with a rueful terror. He reached, at a leap, the
motive for her coming.

"And you rushed off up here to tell me," he said. "Dear Nan! Good child!
But you don't mean they're actually coming to-day?"

"Of course I do," she said impatiently. "Didn't I tell you so? They were
going to take the nine. They're well on the way. They'll get a pung or
something at the station and be driving up to the house presently, and
your sister'll give Charlotte the hamper of provisions she brought and
tell her there'll be four to dinner. There'll be five, though. She
didn't know that. She didn't hear about me. I s'pose you'll ask me to
stay."

Raven put out his hand and stroked her sleeve. This was the first time
she had seemed to him a woman grown. When she came back from school,
those years ago, she had changed to girlhood. It was the girl always
even when she came home from France with a world of hideous memories
sealed away in her heart and brain. They had not, these memories, seemed
so much as to scar her, she had obliterated them so carefully by the
decorum of her desire to make the world no sadder by her knowl