sion of resentment, so much the better
for him.

"Come and have breakfast," he said. "Charlotte's bringing it in."

They went together, and when Dick had bolted his coffee and egg he said:

"Of course I've got to take the 11.03."

"Of course," said Raven. He knew if he were a young lover who had
offended Nan and driven her away, that was what he should do: follow and
humble himself before her. "Jerry'll drive you down."

So it happened that when Amelia, carefully dressed, came out of her room
at noon, Dick had left without a word to her and her dignified
resentment was only diverted by hearing Nan, too, had gone.

"John," said she, disposing herself by the fire, "I should like to know
how you account for that girl?"

"For Nan?" said Raven absently. He was wishing Nan had found it easy to
tell him she was going. "I don't account for Nan. I don't have to."

"So unexpected," said Amelia. "So absolutely impervious to everything
we've brought them up to reverence. It's all of a piece. Depend upon it,
no young girl could go over there and do the things she did and not feel
the effects of it: for life, absolutely for life. You yourself feel the
effects in one way, the young ones in another."

Raven was very considerate of her, left stranded there with him. But
after the noon dinner, when they settled again by the fire, he began to
realize the magnitude of his task. He was simply saddled with Amelia.
She hadn't been able to get her alienist up here, but she had
constituted herself a psychic detective on her own account. At first he
didn't mind, she was so "simple honest" in her expedients. It was
amusing, to a moderate degree, to evade them. How did he sleep? Did he
dream? Did he know anything about the psychology of dreams? There was
Freud.

"Yes," Raven interpolated. "Nasty fellow. Peeps and botanizes on his
mother's grave."

Did the world still seem to him as hopeless as it did at the time of his
writing the letter? That gave him an idea.

"Where is that letter?" he asked, cutting across the track of her
calculated approaches. "What became of it?"

She did not evade him. She was too surprised.

"I gave it," she owned, "to one of our doctors at home. For a medical
congress."

"The devil you did!" Raven permitted himself. "Milly, sometimes I think
you advanced women--O Lord!"

"What else could I do?" Milly inquired, with her deliberate
fair-mindedness, which was, he miserably knew, a part of her culture.
"