o Dick, he was simply Dick, a good substratum of
his father, Anthony Powell, in him, a man who had had long views on
trade and commerce and could manage men. And a streak of Raven, not too
much but enough to imagine the great things the Powell streak would show
him how to put his hand to.

Dick had been staring at him, finding him a long way off, and now he
spoke, shyly if still curiously:

"Would you say you'd found God?"

Raven came back; he considered.

"No," he said, at last, "I couldn't say anything of the sort: it sounds
like such awful swank. But I rather stand in with Old Crow. The fact is,
Dick"--it was almost impossible to get this clarified in his own mind to
the point of passing it on--"Old Crow's made me feel somehow--warm. As
if there's a continuity, you know. As if they keep a hand on us, the
generations that have passed. If that's so, we needn't be so infernally
lonesome, now need we?"

"Well," said Dick, "we are pretty much alone."

"But we needn't be," said Raven, painfully sticking to his text,
"because there are the generations. The being loyal to what the
generations tried to build up, what they demand of us. And behind the
whole caboodle of 'em, there's something else, something bigger,
something warmer still. Really, you know, if only as a matter of
convenience, we might call it--God."

A silence came here and he rather forgot Dick in fantastically thinking
how you might have to climb to the shoulders of a man (Old Crow's, for
instance) to make your leap to God. You couldn't do it from the ground.
Dick had taken off his glasses to wipe them and Raven, recalling himself
and glancing up, found his eyes suffused and soft.

"Jackie," said Dick, "you're a great old sport."

XLII

The spring had two voices for Tira, the voice of a fainting hope and the
voice of fear. The days grew so capriciously lovely that her heart tried
a few notes in answer, and she would stand at her door and look off over
the mountain, fancying herself back there on the other side with the
spirit of girlhood in her, drawing her, in spite of dreary
circumstances, to run, to throw herself on the ground by cool violet
banks to dream and wake, all flushed and trembling, and know she must
not tell that dream. But when the dusk came down and the hylas peeped
and the moist air touched her cheek, she would lose courage and her
heart beat miserably in tune with the melancholy of spring. Still, on
the whole, she was co