haps her mind leaped with
his.

It was, she agreed, impossible. Yet, after all, so many things weren't,
that looked so at the start. Think of surgery: the way they'd both seen
men made over. Well! He didn't remind her that they had also seen a
mountain of men, if fate had piled their bodies as high as it was piling
the fame of their endeavor, who couldn't be made over.

"If we refuse her," he said--and though Nan was determined he should
make his decision alone, she loved him for the coupling of their
intent--"we seem to repudiate her. And that's perfectly devilish, with
her where she is."

It was devilish, Nan agreed. Her part here seemed to be acquiescence in
his attitude of mind, going step by step with him as he broke his path.

"And," said Raven, lapsing into a confidence he had not meant to
make--for would Anne in her jealous possessiveness, allow him to share
one intimate thought about her, especially with Nan?--"the strange part
of it is, I do seem to feel she's somewhere. I seem to feel she's here.
Reminding me, you know, just as a person can by looking at you, though
he doesn't say a word. Have you felt that? Do you now?"

"No," said Nan, with her uncalculated decisiveness that made you sure
she was not merely speaking the truth as she saw it, but that she did
see it clearly. "I have felt it, though, about other people. About two
or three of the boys over there, you know. They were the ones I knew
rather well. And Old Crow! up here, Rookie, alone with you, I have that
sense of Old Crow's being alive, very much alive. Is it the thoughts
he's left behind him, written on the air, or is it really Old Crow?"

"The air's been changed a good many times since he was here," said Raven
lightly. It was not good for little girls to be wrestling forever with
things formless and dark.

"Oh," said she, "but there's something left. Our minds make pictures.
They don't get rubbed out. Why, I can see old Billy Jones sitting here
and Old Crow bandaging his legs, and your mother and little Jack coming
up to bring things in a basket. You can say that's because Old Crow told
it so vividly I can't get it out of my mind. But that isn't all. Things
don't get rubbed out."

XXXV

The next day Raven saw Tenney driving by, probably to the street where
all the neighbors went for supplies. Up to this time Jerry had offered,
whenever he was going, to do Tira's "arrants," and Tenney had even
allowed him to bring home grain.