he majority are thinking and doing to warrant them in
shutting us up. No, I don't believe you could call him insane."

They talked it out from all quarters of argument. Nan proposed emergency
activities and Raven supplied the counter reason, always, he owned,
going back to Tira's obstinacy. Nan was game to kidnap the child, even
from Tira's arms. Couldn't be done, Raven told her. Not longer ago than
yesterday, Tira would have consented, but now, he reminded her, Tenney's
crazy mind was on him. Yes, it was a crazy mind, he owned, but Tenney
was not on that account to be pronounced insane. He couldn't be shut up,
at least without Tira's concurrence. And she never would concur. She
had, if you could put it so, an insane determination equal in measure to
Tenney's insane distrust, to keep the letter of her word. Then, Nan
argued, Tira and the child together must go back with her. To Tenney,
used only to the remote reaches of his home, the labyrinth of city life
was impenetrable. He couldn't possibly find them. He wouldn't be
reasonable enough, intelligent enough, to take even the first step. And
Raven could stay here and fight out the battle. Tenney wouldn't do
anything dramatically silly. Tira was "'way off" in fearing that. He
would only fix Raven with those unpleasant eyes and ask if he were
saved. Very well, Raven agreed. It was worth trying. They must catch the
first chance of seeing Tira alone.

Then, though his mind was on Tira, it reverted to Anne. Again she seemed
to be inexorably beside him, reminding him, with that delicate touch of
her invisible finger, that he was not thinking of her, not even putting
his attention uninterruptedly on what she had bidden him do: her last
request, he seemed to hear her remonstrating, half sighing it to
herself, as if it were only one more of the denials life had made her.
Even if he did not agree with her, in his way of taking things (throwing
away his strength, persuading young men to throw away theirs, that the
limited barbarism called love of country might be served) could he not
act for her, in fulfilling her rarer virtue of universal love?

"I tell you what, Nan," he said, with a leap from Tira to the woman more
potent now in her unseen might than she had ever been when her subtle
ways of mastery had been in action before him, "it's an impossible
situation."

How did she know he was talking, not of Tira but of Anne? Yet she did
know. There had been a moment's pause and per