t him to any degree. And
yet, as she amazedly thought, it had, the last time she saw him,
interested him to the exclusion of everything else.

"I thought I'd remind you," she said, "that it's been in the papers. You
are Miss Anne Hamilton's residuary legatee. Dick knows it. So does your
sister. She'll ask you things. I thought if you'd made up your mind to
refuse it or, in short, anything about it, you'd want to be prepared for
her. Those questions of hers--you can't evade them. They go to the
bottom of your soul--and then some."

"Oh," said Raven dazedly, recalling himself to a complexity he had all
but forgotten. "So they do. I dare say she will ask me. But I
don't--Nan, to tell the truth, I haven't thought of it at all."

The inevitable comment sprung up in Nan's mind, as if his words had
touched a spring, releasing it:

"What have you been thinking then?"

And as if in exact comment upon that, came a sound at the door, a knock,
a hand on the latch and Tira stepped in. Nan turned sharply, and Raven
had only to lift his eyes to see the picture his mind had painted for
him. There she was, a little color in her cheeks from the air, her eyes
heavy, as if she had not slept. She carried the child in his little
white coat and cap, showing, Raven concluded, that she had not been
forced to leave the house in desperate haste. For an instant she
confronted Nan; the life in her face seemed to go out and leave her
haggard. Then, before Raven could take more than the one step forward to
meet her, she had turned and shut the door behind her.

"Wait for me," he threw back over his shoulder at Nan and ran out.

XV

Tira was hurrying through the snowy track, ankle deep at every step.
Raven, bareheaded, ran after. In a minute he had overtaken her.

"Stop!" he called, breathless, more from his emotion than from haste.
"Stop! I tell you."

She did stop, and he came up with her. Now, at last, there were tears in
her eyes, and he thought angrily that he had been the one to overthrow
her control more absolutely than the danger she apprehended. He had, he
thought, in this unreasoning anger, promised her asylum in the hut and
she found it invaded. But curiously he did not think of Nan, who had
come uninvited and scared the poor fugitive away. Nan, child and woman,
was always negligible, too near him to be dealt with. But he had offered
this woman the safety of a roof and walls, and she had fled out of it.
At sight of his f