unhindered: the presence of Nan
here at his hearth, inviting him to know her to the last corner of her
honest mind. She was even eager in this loving hospitality. He would
hardly have seen how to define the closeness of their relation. She had
turned her eyes from the fire to meet his.

"Well?" she said. "What?"

"I was thinking how queer it is," said Raven, "we never've been alone
together very much--'all told' as Charlotte would say--and here we sit
as if we were going to be here forever and talk out all the things."

"What things?" asked Nan.

She was not looking at him now, but back into the fire and she had a
defensive air, as if she expected to find herself on her guard.

"Lots of 'em," said Raven. "The money." His voice sounded to her as if
he cursed it, and again he pulled himself up. "What are we going to do
with it?"

"Aunt Anne's," she said, not as a question but a confirmation.

"Yes. I can't refuse it. That means throwing it back on you. If I won't
decide, I'm simply making you do it for me. I don't see anything for it
but our talking the thing out and making up our minds together."

"No," said Nan. "I sha'n't help you."

"You won't?"

"I suppose it amounts to that."

"Now why the dickens not?"

Nan kept up her stare at the fire. She seemed to be debating deeply,
even painfully.

"Rookie," she said, at last, in a tumultuous rush, "I never meant to say
this. I don't know what'll come of saying it. But you've had a terrible
sort of life. It's almost worse than any life I know. You've been
smothered--by women." This last she said with difficulty, and Raven
reddened, in a reflecting shame. "You've done what they expected you to.
And it's all been because you're too kind. And too humble. You think it
doesn't matter very much what happens to you."

"You've hit it there," said Raven, with a sudden distaste for himself.
"It doesn't."

"And if I could clear your way of every sort of bugbear just by deciding
things for you, I wouldn't do it."

"Don't try to change my destiny," said Raven, plucking up spirit to
laugh at her and lead her away from this unexpected clarity of analysis
that could only mean pain for both of them. "I'm old, dear. I'm not very
malleable, very plastic. We're not, at forty-odd."

"And if," said Nan deliberately, "I loved you better, yes, even better
than I do (if I could!) I wouldn't tell you. It would be putting bonds
on you. It would be setting up the old slavery. The