de them on the wintry road, and they were
hurting her inexpressibly.

"That's it," said Nan. "You're afraid she'll hear."

"If I am," said Raven, "it's not----" There he stopped.

"No," said Nan. She had relented. Her eyes were soft. "You're not afraid
of her. But you are afraid of hurting her. And even that's weak,
Rookie--in a man. Don't be so pitiful. Leave it to the women."

Raven laughed a little now. Again she seemed a child, crying after the
swashbuckling hero modern man has put into the discard, where apparently
he has to stay, except now and then when he ventures out and struts a
little. But it avails him nothing. Somebody laughs, and back he has to
go.

"I am pretty stupid," he said. "But never mind about an old stager like
me. Don't be afraid of showing him--the man, I mean--all your charm.
Don't be afraid of going to his head. You've got enough to justify every
possible hope you could hold out to him. You're the loveliest--Nan,
you're the loveliest thing I ever saw."

"The loveliest?" said Nan, again recklessly. "Lovelier than Tira?"

For an instant she struck him dumb. Was Tira so lovely? To him certainly
she had a beauty almost inexpressible. But was it really inherent in
her? Or was it something in the veil he found about her, that haze of
hopeless suffering?

"Do you think she's beautiful?"

His voice was keen; curiosity had thinned it to an edge. Nan answered it
with exactness.

"I think she's the most beautiful thing I ever saw. She doesn't know it.
If she did, she'd probably wave her hair and put on strange chiffons,
what Charlotte calls dewdads. She'd have to be the cleverest woman on
earth to resist them. And because she's probably never been an inch out
of this country neighborhood, she'd rig herself up--Charlotte again!--in
the things the girls like round here. But she either doesn't know her
power or she doesn't care."

"I'm inclined to think," said Raven slowly, "she never has looked at
herself in that way. It has brought her things she doesn't want, things
that made her suffer. And she's worked so hard trying to manage the
whole business--life and her sufferings--she hasn't had time to lay much
stress on her looks."

"It's all so strange," said Nan, as if the barriers were down and she
wanted to indicate something hardly clear to herself. "You see, she
isn't merely beautiful. Most of us look like what we are. We're rather
nice looking, like me, or we're plain. But she 'takes back