he
understood, in his unfailing knowledge of her, that it was the first
crooked one she had ever given him, and for the first time he felt anger
toward her. She was defending her enemy, and against him.

"He does the best he can," she said. "He takes things terrible hard. I
dunno's I ever see anybody that took 'em so hard."

Then, as he did not speak, she looked at him and meeting the cold
unresponsiveness in his face her composure broke and she stretched out
her hands to him in a wildness of entreaty.

"Oh, don't you look like that," she cried. "If you turn from me 'twill
be my death."

He was not cold now. He bent to her and took her hands in his.

"Tira," he said, "come away with me. You can't bear this any longer.
Take the child and come. You'd be safe. You'd be happy, if you weren't
afraid. Don't go back there for another minute. Stay here over night,
and to-morrow I'll take you away."

He was looking at her, his eyes holding hers as his hands held her
hands. And, whatever he had meant, the strangest, swiftest retribution
of his life came to him through the change in her face. How could flesh
and muscle bring about such an alteration in human line and texture, the
Mother of Sorrows transformed to a Medusa head? Her lips parted,
trembling over words they could not bring themselves to say. Her eyes
widened into darkness. Her brows drew together in a pitiful questioning.
And her voice, when she did speak, was a vibrating protest against what
her eyes knew and her mind.

"You don't mean," she said, "_that_?"

Raven dropped her hands as if they had struck him. The question was a
rushing commentary on his life and hers. Was he, she meant, only another
actor in this drama of man's hunger and savagery? Was he a trader in the
desire of beauty, that tragic dower nature had thrown over her like a
veil, so that whoever saw it with a covetous eye, longed to possess and
rend it? Probably Tira never did what would be called thinking. But her
heart had a vital life of its own, her instinct was the genius of
intuition. He had been kind to her, compassionate. She had built up a
temple out of her trust in him, and now he had smoked the altar with the
incense that was rank in her nostrils. He had brought, not flowers and
fruits, but the sacrifice of blood. And he, on his part, what did he
think? Only that he must save her.

"No, Tira," he said, "I don't mean that. I mean--what you want me to
mean. You can't understand what