wn clasped, lying on
Nan's knee.

"Yes," she said, "you better. You come to the Donnyhills'. Yes, you
come."

Then she considered again, and began one of her slow, difficult
meanderings, where the quickness of her heart and brain ran ahead of her
tongue's art to interpret them.

"Seems if you knew," she said, "'most everything that's gone on."

"Yes," said Nan, at a venture, and yet truthfully. "I think I've known."

"An' now it's come to an end," said Tira. "Or if it ain't, it's on the
way to it. An' seems if you ought to know the whole. You're tough enough
to stan' up to 't."

"Yes," said Nan simply, "I'm very tough. Nothing's going to hurt me."

"I bring," said Tira, still with difficulty, "bad luck. Some folks do.
Folks set by me a spell. Then they stop. They think I'm goin' to be
suthin' they'd do 'most anything for, an' then they seem to feel as if I
wa'n't. An' there's no"--she sought for a word here and came out
blunderingly--"no peace nor rest. Nor for me, neither. I ain't had peace
nor rest. Except"--here she paused again and ended gravely, and not this
time inadequately--"in him."

Nan understood. She was grave in her answer.

"Mr. Raven," she said. "I know."

The color flowed into Tira's face and she looked at Nan, with her
jewel-like eyes.

"I'm goin' to tell you," she said, "the whole story. He's like--my God.
Anything I could do for him--'twould be nothin'. Anything he asked of
me----"

Here the light faded out from her face and the flesh of it had that
curious look of curdling, as if with muscular horror.

"But," she said, "here 'tis. S'pose it come on him, that--that"--she
threw back her head in despair over her poverty of words--"s'pose it
made him like----Oh, I tell you there's suthin' queer about me, there's
suthin' wrong. It ain't that I look different from other folks. I ain't
ever meant to act different. I swear to my God I've acted like a decent
woman--an' a decent girl--an' when I was little I never even had a
thought! You tell me. You'd know."

Nan felt the hand on hers tighten. She put her other hand over it, and
thought. What could she tell her? These matters were too deep in the
causes of things for man to have caught a glimpse of them, except now
and then darkly through some poet's mind. There was one word that, to a
poet's mind only, might have illumined the darkness if only for an
instant: beauty, that was the word. Mankind could not look on beauty
such as this and not