artled
him as it did Raven, "that you're in love with her?"

"Good God!" said Raven. He rose, laid his pipe on the mantel and stood,
trembling, even in his clenched hands. "What is there to answer," he got
out at length, "to a question like that? You've just reminded me I'm
past my youth. Why don't you remember it yourself when it'll do you some
good? I'm an old chap, and you----"

"You're as fit as ever you were in your life," said Dick, as if he
grudged it to him. "And more fascinating, I suppose, to a girl like her.
There's something pathetic about it. It's half pity, too! Nothing so
dangerous in the world."

Raven swung round, walked to the window and, hands in his pockets, stood
looking out. In love with Nan! well, he did love Nan better than any
created thing. All the old tests, the old obediences, would be nothing
to him if he could consecrate them to Nan, her happiness, her safety in
this dark world. How about his life? Yes, he would give that, a small
thing, if Nan needed the red current of it to quicken her own. But "in
love" as Dick understood it! If you were to judge Dick's comprehension
of it from his verse, love was a sex madness, a mortal lure for the
earth's continuance, by the earth begot. And who had unconsciously held
out that lure to him but the woman of mystery up there on the road in
that desolate house with her brutal husband and her deficient child? He
had seen the innocent lure, he had longed to put out his hand to the
hand unconsciously beckoning. Through the chill wintry night the message
came to him now. And only Nan could understand that the message might
come and that it was a part of the earth and to be forgotten, like a hot
wind or a thrilling song out of the dark--Nan, his darling, a part of
him, his understanding mind, as well as the fiber of his heart. Suddenly
he turned on Dick who was watching him, ready, it seemed, to pounce on
his first change of look.

"Dick," he said, "I adore Nan."

"Yes," said Dick, "I know you do. I told you----"

"But," broke in Raven, "you don't know anything about it."

"Oh," said Dick, "then I don't adore her, too."

Raven reflected. No, his inner mind told him, there was no community of
understanding between them. How should Dick traverse with him the long
road of rebuff and downfall he had traveled? How should youth ever be
expected to name the cup it has not tasted? For Dick, he thought again,
what is known as love was a simple, however overwhe