woman was the more intuitive, but the man was no less
honest. She thought a moment now, her gaze unseeingly following the
pattern of the rug at her feet.

"Very well," she said. "I'll go over to the house and get some things,
and I'll stay."

There were, they both knew, bureau drawers full of Aunt Anne's things,
doubtless in the perfect order that was a part of her exquisite mastery
of life. She disliked traveling with a cumbersome outfit, even from the
city to this ancestral foothold. Everything possible was left behind her
in each place.

"I'll go with you," said Raven. She should not poke into the cold house
alone for the first time since she had inherited it, and encounter the
desolation of change.

They went downstairs and out into the road, Charlotte looking from the
window after them and wondering if they were bound on some jaunt that
would leave her to encounter Mrs. Powell undefended. Nan's spirits
always came up in the out-of-doors. She was a normal creature, needing
to be quickened only by full air. She began to laugh.

"Rookie," she said, "I could tell you something funny."

"Fire away," said Raven.

"It's about my staying. I didn't bring any real things, because I knew I
could come over here and get some, but my toothbrush is right here in my
coat pocket. Don't you see, Rookie? I was going to stay if you made me,
but not if you didn't, and you weren't to know I so much as thought of
it."

"Humbug!" said Raven. "I might ha' knowed."

They came to the house, a great yellow square, well back from the road,
and there being no path through the snow, Nan boasted of her boots and
laughed at him for ordering her to wait until he went back for a shovel.
So he strode ahead and broke a path and she followed, and he was not
really concerned for her because she looked so fit; it seemed unlikely
the natural conditions of nature would hurt her, however hostile. She
opened the door with the key produced from her coat pocket and stepped
into the great hall, darkened from the obscurity of the rooms on each
side where shades had been drawn, and a winter coldness reigned. Nan
gave herself no time to shiver over the chill of her homecoming, but ran
up the stairs as if she expected to find the sun at the end, and Raven
stood in the hall, waiting, and the presence of Anne seemed suddenly
beside him, and something he tried to think of as the winter cold
(though it was far more penetrating and ethereal) struck him with a