n, and Tira interrupted him
softly, looking at him meantime, as if she besought him to understand:

"I promised to."

Raven sat there and looked into the fire, thinking desperately. At that
moment, he wanted nothing in the world so much as to snatch her away
from Tenney and set her feet in a safe place. But did he want it solely
for her or partly for himself? What did it matter? Casuistry was far
outside the tumult of desire. He would kick over anything, law or
gospel, to keep her from going back there this night. Yet he spoke
quietly:

"We'll go up and get the baby, and I'll call Charlotte, and you'll stay
here to-night. To-morrow we'll go."

"No," said Tira, gently but immovably, "I couldn't have Charlotte an'
Jerry brought into it. Not anyways in the world."

"Why not?" asked Raven.

"I couldn't," she said. "They're neighbors. They're terrible nice folks,
but folks have to talk--they can't help it--an', 'fore you knew it, it'd
be all over the neighborhood. An' he's a professin' Christian. 'Twould
be terrible for him."

Sometimes he only knew from the tone of her voice, in this general
vagueness of expecting him to understand her, whether she meant Tenney
or the child.

"What I thought was," she went on timidly, "if she'd come an' git
him"--and here "him" evidently meant the child--"'twould be reasonable
she was takin' him back where he could be brought up right. She'd just
as soon do it," she assured him earnestly, as if he had no part in Nan.
"Some folks are like that. They're so good."

He was insatiate in his desire to understand her.

"And you mean," he said, with a directness he was willing to tincture
with a cruelty sharp enough to serve, "to send the child off somewhere
where he will be safe, and then live here with this brute, have more
children by him----"

"No! no!" she cried sharply. "Not that! don't you say that to me. I
can't bear it. Not from you! My God help me! not from you."

He understood her. She loved him. He was set apart by her overwhelming
belief in him, but she was in all ways, the ways of the flesh as well as
the spirit, consecrated to him. Her body might become the prey of man's
natural cruelty, and yet, while she wept her tears of blood in this
unreasoning slavery, she held one worship. There he would be alone. The
insight of the awakened mind told him another thing: that, in spite of
her despairing loyalty, he could conquer her scruples. He could, by the
sheer weight of a l