defective imagination, his straining mind. He didn't see the earth as it
was. He was so enamored of metaphorical indirection that he tried to see
everything in the terms of something else. But to-day she had her own
thoughts. She sat staring into the fire, her cheeks burned by the
leaping heat, and Dick, looking up at her, stopped on an uncompleted
line.

"You haven't," he said, "heard a word."

"Not much of it," said Nan. She looked at him disarmingly. When her eyes
were like that, Dick's heart was as water. "I was thinking about Tira."

He had to place this. Who was Tira?

"Oh," said he, "the Tenney woman. Jack needn't have dragged you into
that. It's a dirty country story."

"Not dirty," said Nan. "You'd love it if you'd thought of it yourself.
You'd write a play about it."

Dick frowned.

"Well, I didn't think of it," said he, "and if I had, I shouldn't be
eating and sleeping it as you and Jack are. Whatever's happening up
there, it isn't our hunt. It's hers, the woman's. Or the authorities'.
The man ought to be shut up."

Nan began telling him how it all was, how they wanted definitely to do
the right thing and how Tira herself blocked them. Dick listened,
commended the drama of it, and yet found it drama only.

"But it's a beastly shame," he commented, "to have this come on Jack
just now when he isn't fit."

Nan had her sudden hot angers.

"Do you mean to tell me," she countered, "you believe that now, now
you've lived with him and seen he's exactly what he used to be, only
more darling--you believe he's broken, dotty? Heavens! I don't know what
you'd call it."

Dick did not answer. He scarcely heard. One word only hit him like a
shot and drew blood.

"Stop that!" he ordered.

They faced each other with eyes either angry or full of a tumultuous
passion an onlooker would have been puzzled to name.

"Stop what?"

"Calling him darling. I won't have it."

Nan found this truly funny, and broke into a laugh.

"Do you know," she said, "how every talk of ours ends? Rookie! It always
comes round to him. I call him darling and you won't have it. But you'll
have to."

"No," said Dick, "I won't have it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
You little devil! I believe you do it to work me up. That's all right if
it stopped there. But it won't. Some day he'll hear you and then----!"

She was flaming again.

"Hear me? Hear me call him darling? Why, he's heard it so often it's no
more to him than your