Surely, you wouldn't suppress evidence. And it won't be traced to you.
You're simply Mr. X."

Raven was silent. He was thinking what a fool he had been to unpack his
heart with words, and that if he told Milly so he should simply be
unpacking it some more. He looked at the clear winter day occupying
itself out there without him, and wondered why the deuce he couldn't put
on snowshoes and tramp off his discontent leaving her to fight her
boredom by the fire. She'd brought it on herself, hadn't she? Nobody
wanted her to come. Was there some hidden force in women, their apparent
vulnerability to the harsh world conditions that were bound to crush out
even them in the end? They seemed so weak you had, in mercy, to
reenforce them and then they proved so horribly strong, and used their
strength against you, depleted as you were by fighting for them. Anyway,
if he could get Milly's blood to moving and pump some of this hill air
into her she, too, might be a more wholesome citizen of even an
unfeeling earth.

"Want to go to walk, Milly?" he suggested seductively, and she looked at
him pleasantly, grateful for the tone, at least.

"No," she said, "we're so cozy here."

Cozy! it might be cozy, if that meant being choked. But he thought he
could stand a little more of it, and then he would at least drop asleep
and snore. The indiscretions of the body were terrible to Amelia. And he
did fall into a hopeless lethargy, and only about five o'clock, when the
early dark had come, threw it off and got to his feet.

"'Bye," he said. "I'll be back for supper."

Before she could answer, he was gone. Now he was afraid she might say,
with an ill-timed acquiescence, that after all she would have a little
walk, and he knew he simply couldn't stand it. By the fire, making an
inexorable assault on his senses, the calm, steady beat of her futile
talk could be borne. You bore it by listening through a dream. But out
of doors, when the crisp air had waked you, you'd simply have to swear
or run. He did run, snatching his hat as he went, up the road toward
Tenney's. It was not a reasoned flight, but he did want to calm himself
by the light burning through their windows, perhaps a glimpse of Tira
moving about. The night was going to be clear and not too cold for
pleasant lingering. Over beyond the rising slope opposite Nan's house he
heard an owl hooting and, nearer, the barking of a fox. He turned that
way and stood facing the dark slope. He kne