any
better here. They're getting worse."

"Oh, no," she hastened to say. "They're better."

"Only last night you had to run away from him."

"Things are ever so much better," said Tira, smiling at him, with a
radiance of conviction that lighted her face to a new sort of beauty.
"They're all right. I've found the Lord."

What could he say? Old Crow had besought him, too, to abandon fear in
the certainty of a safe universe speaking through the symbols man could
understand. He tried to summon something that would reach and move her.

"What if I were drowning," he said. "Suppose I knew I should"--he sought
for the accepted phrase--"go to heaven, if I drowned. Do you think I
should be right in not trying to save myself?"

Tira knit her brows. It was only for an instant, though.

"No," she said. "Certain you'd have to save yourself. You'd have to try
every way you knew. That's what I've done. I'm tryin' every way I know."

"I'm telling you another way," said Raven sharply. "I'm telling you you
can't live with a crazy man----"

"Oh, no," she interrupted earnestly. "He ain't that. He has spells,
that's all."

"I'm not even asking you to go away with me. I'm asking you to go with
that good woman over there." Somehow he felt this was more appealing
than the name of Nan. "I trust her as I do myself, more than myself.
It's to save your life, Tira, your life and the baby's life."

She was looking at him out of eyes warm with the whole force of her
worshiping love and gratitude.

"No," she said softly. "I can't go. I ain't got a word to say ag'inst
her," she added eagerly. "She's terrible good. Anybody could see that.
But I can't talk to folks. I can't let 'em know. Not anybody," she added
softly, as if to herself, "but you."

Raven forbade himself to be moved by this.

"Then," he said, "you'll have to talk to other folks you may not like so
well. I shall complain of him. I shall be a witness to what I've seen
and what you've told me. I've threatened you with that before, but now
it's got to be done."

"No," said Tira, trying, he could see, through every fiber of will in
her to influence him. But never by her beauty: she was game there. "You
wouldn't tell what I've said to you. You couldn't. 'Twas said to you an'
nobody else. It couldn't ha' been said to anybody else on this livin'
earth."

Here was a spark of passion, as if she struck it out unknowingly. But he
must not be moved, and by every means he would move