back at him.

"No," he felt obliged to own.

"Is she right about this, trying to fetter you, hand and foot, against
what she knew you believed, and banking on your doing it because she's
crowded you and rushed you so many times and you've never failed her?"

"Oh, yes," said Raven miserably, "I've failed her often enough."

"But answer me that: was she right when she left you her money to do
this fool thing and give the world another kick down hill where the
sentimentalists are sending it? Now I ask you, Rookie, was she right?"

"No," he owned again.

"Then," said Nan triumphantly, "you mean she's right about teas and
dinners and women's clubs and old portraits and genealogy and believing
our family tree was the tree of life. That's what you mean, isn't it,
Rookie?"

Raven looked at her, an unhappy smile dawning. He was moderately sure,
in his unspoken certainties, that this was what he did mean. She had
been the perfect product of a certain form of civilization, her
proprieties, her cruelties even--though, so civilized were they, they
seemed to rank only as spiritual necessities.

"I'd rather see a monkey climbing our family tree," said Nan, with a
rash irrelevance she hoped might shock him into the reaction of a
wholesome disapproval, "than all those stiffs she used to hold up for me
to imitate."

"Don't!" said Raven involuntarily. "It would hurt her like the mischief
to hear you say a thing like that."

"Why, Rookie," said Nan, with a tenderness for him alone, he saw, not
for Aunt Anne, "you act as if she might be--in the room." She kept a
merciful restraint on herself there. She had almost said: "You act as if
you were afraid she might be in the room."

He sat staring at her from under frowning brows. Was it possible, his
startled consciousness asked itself, that the spell of Anne's tenacity
of will had not lifted in the least and he did think she might be in the
room? Not to intimidate him: he had never feared her. He had been under
the yoke, not only of his decent gratitude, but his knowledge of the
frightful hurts he could deal her. He wondered what Nan would say if he
could tell her that, if he could paint for her the most awful hour in
his remembrance, more terrible even than that of seeing his mother
suffer under mortal disease, when Anne had actually given way before
him, the only time in her ordered life, and accused him of the cruelty
of not loving her. This had not been the thin passion of the