ow."

"You've found Old Crow? What do you mean by that?"

"Can't tell you now. Wait till we sit down together."

"And she's truly gone?"

They stood there in the road as if Nan's house were not at hand; but the
air and the sun were pleasant to them.

"Gone, bag and baggage. Dick wired and ordered her in some way she
didn't dare ignore. I suspect he did it to save me. He's a good boy."

"He is a good boy," said Nan. There was a reminiscent look in her eyes.
"But he's a very little one. Were we ever so young, Rookie, you and I?"

"You!"

"Yes. I'm a sphinx compared with Dick. I didn't tell you last night,
there was so much else to say, but I had a letter from him, returned to
Boston from New York. He assumed, you know, if I wasn't in Boston I'd
gone to the Seaburys'. So he wrote there."

"What's he want?"

Nan hesitated a moment. Then she said:

"It's a pretty serious letter, Rookie. I suppose it's a love-letter."

"Don't you know?"

"Yes, I suppose I know. But it's so childish. He's furious, then he's
almost on his knees begging, and then he goes back to being mad again.
Rookie, he's so young."

"When it comes to that," said Raven, "you're young, too. I've told you
that before."

"Young! Oh! but not that way. I couldn't beg for anything. I couldn't
cry if I didn't get it. I don't know what girls used to do, but we're
different, Rookie, we that have been over there."

"Yes," said Raven, "but you mustn't let it do too much to you. You
mustn't let it take away your youth."

Nan shook her head.

"Youth isn't so very valuable," she said, "not that part of it. There's
lots of misery in it, Rookie. Don't you know there is?"

"Yes," said Raven, "I know." Suddenly he remembered Anne and the bonds
she had laid on him. Had he not suffered them, in a dumb way, finding no
force within himself to strike them off? Had he been a coward, a dull
fellow tied to women's restraining wills? And he had by no means escaped
yet. Wasn't Anne inexorably by his side now, when he turned for an
instant from the problem of Tira, saying noiselessly, this invisible
force that was Anne: "What are you going to do about my last wish, my
last command? You are thinking about Nan, about that strange woman,
about yourself. Think about me." But he deliberately summoned his mind
from the accusing vision of her, and turned it to Nan. "Then," he said,
"there doesn't seem to be much hope for Dick, poor chap!"

"Doesn't there?" she inquired