calling him Jack. But if he asked me what I meant
by it! do you know what would happen then?"

"What would?"

"Then," said Nan enigmatically, "I should tell him, that's all."

She would say no more, though he hurled questions at her, and hardly
remembered afterward what they were. He was of an impression that he
begged her to love him, to marry him, though Dick, prodigal as he was of
great words in his verse, scarcely believed he used them in the direct
address of love-making. But certainly he did beg her, and Nan was gentle
with him, though always, like Tira, as she remembered afterward,
repeating, "No! no!" At the end, his passion softened into something
appealing, as if they were together considering the sad case he found
himself in and he depended on her to help him through.

"Nan," he said, in the boyish way she loved, "don't you see it's got to
be in the end? We've always been together. We're always going to be.
Don't you see, old Nan?"

Nan smiled at him, brilliantly, cruelly, he thought. But she was sorry
for him, and it was only a show of cruelty. It came out of her kindness,
really. Dick mustn't suffer so for want of her. Bully him, abuse him,
anything to anger him and keep him from sheer weak, unavailing regret.
Nan had a great idea of what men should be: "tough as a knot," she
thought, seasoned all through. If they whimpered, she was aghast.

"No," she said again, with the brilliant smile, "no! no! I can't. I
won't. Not unless"--and this, too, was calculated cruelty--"unless
Rookie tells me to."

They sat staring at each other as if each wondered what the outcome was
to be. Nan was excitedly ready for it. Or had the last word been
actually said? But Dick altogether surprised her. He got up and stood
looking down at her in a dignity she found new to him.

"When you come to me," he said, "you'll come because I ask you. It won't
be because any other man tells you to."

He walked past her, out of the room. Did he, Nan wondered, in her
ingenuous surprise, look a very little like Rookie? When he was twenty
years older, was he going to look as Rookie did now? His expression,
that is. For, after all, there was Dick's nose.

And in these days what of Tira? She, too, was on an edge of nervous
apprehension. Tenney was about the house a great deal. He still made
much of his lameness, though never in words. Every step he took seemed
an implication that a cane was far from sufficient. He needed his
crutch. An