spring.
"Everything," said Raven, "seems to be in waves. It has its climax and
goes down. Tenney's reached the climax of his jealousy. Now he's got
himself to think about, and the other thing will go down. Rather a big
price for Dick to pay, to make Tira safe, but he has paid and I fancy
she's safe." He turned to her suddenly. "Milly's very nice to you," he
asserted, half interrogatively.

He saw the corner of her mouth deepen a little as she smiled. Milly had
not, they knew, been always nice.

"Yes," she agreed, "very nice. She gives me all the credit she doesn't
give you about doctors and nurses and radiographs and Dick's hanging on
by his eyelids. She says I've saved him."

"So you have," said Raven. "You've kept his heart up. And now you're
tired, my dear, and I want you to go away."

"To go away?" said Nan. "Where?"

"Anywhere, away from us. We drain you like the deuce."

"No," said Nan, turning from him and speaking half absently, "I can't go
away."

"Why can't you?"

"He'd miss me."

"He'd know why you went."

Her old habit of audacious truth-telling constrained her.

"I should have to write to him," she said. "And I couldn't. I couldn't
keep it up. I can baby him all kinds of ways when he's looking at me
with those big eyes. But I couldn't write him as he'd want me to. I
couldn't, Rookie. It would be a promise."

"Milly thinks you have promised." This he ventured, though against his
judgment.

"No," said Nan. "No, I haven't promised. Do you want me to?"

"I don't know," Raven answered, without a pause, as if he had been
thinking about it interminably. "If it had some red blood in it, if you
were--well, if you loved him, Nan, I should be mighty glad. I'd like to
see you living, up to the top notch, having something you knew was the
only thing on earth you wanted. But these half and half things, these
falterings and doing things because somebody wants us to! God above us!
I've faltered too much myself. I'd rather have made all the mistakes a
man can compass, done it without second thought, than have ridden up to
the wall and refused to take it."

"Do you think of her all the time?" she ventured, in her turn, and
perversely wondered if he would think she meant Tira and not Aunt Anne.

But he knew. "No," he said, "I give you my word she's farther away from
me than she ever was in her life. For a while she was here, at my elbow,
asking me what I was going to do about her Palace of Peace. But
sud