ought it, he was none the less unwise in saying so. He knew
that, knew the effect he had produced, and yet was powerless to modify
it. Nan was plainly taken aback, and she knew why. He was destroying her
happy moment, snatching it out of any possible sequence of hours here
with Rookie. Dick had come and he would stay. Raven read the boy's face
and was bored. He had seen that look too much of late. But he rose and
went forward with the appropriate air of welcome.

"Well, old boy," said he, his hand on Dick's shoulder, "why didn't you
'phone up? There'd have been something ready for you. No matter. We'll
make a raid on the pantry."

"I don't want anything," said Dick morosely.

His eyes never left Nan. They traveled from her braids to her feet. Why,
his angry gaze demanded, was she sitting here in a beguiling
masquerade--silly, too! The masquerade was silly. But it made her into
something so unapproachable in the citadel of a childhood she had no
lien on any longer that his heart ached within him. Except for that one
kiss in France--a kiss so cruelly repudiated after (most cruelly because
she had made it seem as if it were only a part of her largess to the
War) he had found little pleasure in Nan. Yet there could be such
pleasure with her. The generous beauties of her mind and heart looked to
him a domain large enough for a life's exploring. But even the woman who
had given him the kiss in France had vanished, withdrawn into the little
girl Raven seemed to be forever wakening in her. He got out of his
driving coat and stepped into the hall to drop it. When he came back,
Nan had made room at the fire and Raven had drawn up another chair.

"Now," said Raven, "I'll forage for some grub."

At that, he left them, and Nan thought bitterly it was the cowardice of
man. Dick was in the sulks and she was to suffer them alone.

XXVIII

Dick, looking down upon Nan, had that congealed aspect she alone had the
present power of freezing him into. She knew all the possibilities of
that face. There was the angry look: that had reigned of late when she
flouted or denied him. There was the sulky frown, index of his jealousy
of Rookie, and there had been, what seemed a long time ago, before they
went through this disintegrating turmoil of war, the look of a boy's
devotion. Nan had prized him very much then, when he was not flaunting
angry rights over her. Now she sat perversely staring into the fire,
realizing that everything