reted as pride. "I'm in it. And I'm going to play the game."

They went on for a while without speaking, and then Raven looked round
at her, a whimsical look.

"So you give notice," he said, "you're grown up."

"I give notice," said Nan tersely. "I'm a very old lady really, older
than you are, Rookie." Then she judged the moment had come for setting
him right on a point that might be debatable. "If you think I was a
little girl when I sat there and loved you the other night, you might as
well know I wasn't. And I wasn't a woman either: not then. I was just a
person, a creatur', Charlotte would say, that wanted you to get under
your tough lonesome old hide there's somebody that loves you to death
and believes in you and knows everything you feel."

"Am I lonesome, Nan?" he asked quickly, picking out the word that struck
him deepest. "I don't know."

"I do," said Nan. "You haven't had any of the things men ought to have
to keep them from growing into those queer he-birds stuck all over with
ridiculous little habits like pin feathers that make you want to
laugh--and cry, too. Old bachelors. Lord!"

"Look out," said Raven. "You'll get me interested in myself. I've gone
too far that way already. The end of that road is Milly and
psycho-analysis and my breaking everybody's head because they won't let
me alone."

"Break 'em then," said Nan concisely. "And run away. Take this Tira with
you and run off to the Malay Peninsula or somewhere. That sounds further
away than most places. Or an island: there must be an island left
somewhere, for a homesick old dear like you."

"Now, in God's name," said Raven, "what do you say that for?"

"Tira?" Nan inquired recklessly. "What do I tell you to take her for?
Because I want to see you mad, Rookie, humanly mad. And she's got the
look that makes us mad, men and women, too."

"What is it?" Raven asked thickly. "What is the look?"

"Mystery. It's beauty first, and then mystery spread over that. She's
like--why, Rookie, she's like life itself--mystery."

"No," said Raven, surprising her, "you're not a little girl any more:
that's true enough. I don't know you."

"Likely not," said Nan, undisturbed. "You can't have your cake and eat
it. You can't have a little Nan begging for stories and a Nan that's on
her job of seeing you get something out of life, if she can manage it,
before it's too late."

There she stopped, on the verge, she suddenly realized, of blundering.
He was not