"That's it," said Nan. "If you didn't think I was a child, perhaps you'd
want me. O Rookie! I wish you wanted me!"

Into Raven's mind flashed the picture of Anne on her knees beside him
saying, in that sharp gasp of her sorrow, "You don't love me." This was
no such thing, yet, in some phase, was life going to repeat itself over
and over in the endless earth journeys he might have to make, futilities
of mismated minds, the outcry of defrauded souls? But at least this
wasn't his cowardly silence on the heel of Anne's gasping cry. He could
be honest here, for this was Nan.

"My darling," he said, "you're nearer to me than anything in this
world--or out of it. Don't you make any mistake about that. And if I
don't want things 'like fury,' as you say, it's a matter of the
calendar, that's all. Dick wants them like fury. So do you. I'm an old
chap, dear. You can't set back the clock."

But he had pushed her away, as his aloofness had pushed Anne. He had
thrown Anne back upon her humiliated self. He had tossed Nan forward
into Dick's generation and hers. But here was the difference. She wasn't
going to cry out, "You don't love me." Instead, she turned to him,
shivering a little and drawing her scarf about her shoulders.

"We'd better go down," she said. "It's getting cold. Dick'll be
wondering."

They got up and Raven set the chairs inside the hut and took his glance
about to see if all was in order: for he did not abandon the unwilling
hope that Tira might sometime come. As they went down the hill the talk
turned to the hylas and the spring, but when they reached the house Nan
did not go in to Dick. She went to her own room and lay down on her bed
and thought passionately of leaving Rookie free. How was it possible?
Could he be free while she was bound? Sometimes of late she had been so
tired that she could conceive of no refuge but wild and reckless outcry.
And what could he think she meant when she said: "I wished you wanted
me"?

XLI

Spring came on fast and Nan, partly to assure Milly she wasn't to be
under foot forever, talked of opening her house and beginning to live
there, for the first time without Aunt Anne. But she predicted it, even
to Milly, with no great interest, and Raven, though he had urged her to
run away from the cloudy weather Milly and Dick made for her, protested
against her living alone. Dick was now strong enough to walk from his
room to the porch, and Raven, watching him, saw in hi