and smiled in recognizing that they were
alone and that when that happened things grew simple and straight. To
Raven there was also the sense of another presence. Anne had somehow
been invoked. Amelia, with her unfailing dexterity in putting her foot
in, had done it: but still there Anne was, with the unspoken question on
her silent lips. What was he going to do? He knew her wish. Presently he
would have her money. He caught the interrogation in Nan's eyes. What
was he going to do?

"I don't know, Nan," he said. "I don't know."

"Never mind," said Nan. "You'll know when the time comes."

And he was aware that she was still in her mood of forcing him on to
make his own decisions. But, easily as he read her mind, there were many
things he did not see there. It was a turmoil of questions, and of these
the question of Aunt Anne was least. Did he love Tira? This headed the
list. Did he want to tear down his carefully built edifice of culture
and the habit of conventional life, and run away with Tira to elemental
simplicities and sweet deliriums? And if he did love Tira, if he did
want to tear down his house of life and live in the open, she would help
him. But all she said was:

"Good night, Rookie. I'm sleepy, too."

To leap a dull interval of breakfast banalities is to find Nan, on a
crisp day, blue above and white below, at the Tenneys' door. Tira,
frankly apprehensive, came to let her in. Tira had had a bad night. The
burning of the crutch fanned a fire of torment in her uneasy mind. She
had hardly slept, and though she heard Tenney's regular breathing at her
side, she began to have a suspicion it was not a natural breathing. She
was persuaded he meant now to keep track of her, by night as well as
day. It began to seem to her a colossal misfortune that the crutch was
not there leaning against the foot of the bed, and now its absence was
not so much her fault as a part of its own malice. Nan, noting the worn
pallor of her face and the dread in her eyes, gathered that Tenney was
at home. She put out her hand, and Tira, after an instant's hesitation,
gave hers. Nan wondered if she were in a terror wild enough to paralyze
her power of action. Still, she had given her hand, and when Nan stepped
up on the sill, with a cheerful implication of intending, against any
argument, to come in, she stood aside and followed her. But at the
instant of her stepping aside, Nan was aware that she threw both hands
up slightly. It was th