denly--I don't know whether it's because my mind has been on
Dick--suddenly I realized she was gone. It's the first time." Here he
stopped, and Nan knew he meant it was the first time since his boyhood
that he had felt definitely free from that delicate tyranny. And being
jealous for him and his dominance over his life, she wondered if another
woman had crowded out the memory of Aunt Anne. Had Tira done it?

"And you haven't decided about the money."

"I've decided," he surprised her by saying at once, "to talk it out with
Anne."

She could only look at him.

"One night," he continued, "when Dick was at his worst, I was there
alone with him, an hour or so, and I was pretty well keyed up. I seemed
to see things in a stark, clear way. Nothing mattered: not even Dick,
though I knew I never loved the boy so much as I did at that minute. I
seemed to see how we're all mixed up together. And the things we do to
help the game along, the futility of them. And suddenly I thought I
wouldn't stand for any futility I could help, and I believe I asked Old
Crow if I wasn't right. 'Would you?' I said. I knew I spoke out loud,
for Dick stirred. I felt a letter in my pocket--it was about the estate,
those bonds, you remember--and I knew I'd got to make up my mind about
Anne's Palace of Peace."

Nan's heart was beating hard. Was he going to follow Aunt Anne's
command, the poor, pitiful letter that seemed so generous to mankind and
was yet so futile in its emotional tyranny?

"And I made up my mind," he said, with the same simplicity of hanging to
the fact and finding no necessity for explaining it, "to get hold of
Anne, put it to her, let her see I meant to be square about it, but it
had got to be as I saw it and not as she did. Really because I'm here
and she isn't."

Her eyes filled with tears, and as she made no effort to restrain them,
they ran over and spilled in her lap. She had thought hard for him, but
never so simply, so sternly as this.

"How do you mean, Rookie," she asked humbly, in some doubt as to her
understanding. "How can you get hold of Aunt Anne?"

"I don't know," said he. "But I've got to. I may not be able to get at
her, but she must be able to get at me. She's got to. She's got to
listen and understand I'm doing my best for her and what she wants. Old
Crow understands me. And when Anne does--why, then I shall feel free."

And while he implied it was freedom from the tyranny of the bequest, she
knew it imp