.

"You've left the door open," said she. "Don't you want to lock up?"

"No," said Tira, "he'll see to it."

At the gate they parted, with a little smile from Tira, the kind that so
strangely changed her into something more childlike than her youth.

"You come," she said, "in the mornin'. I shall be there, an' glad enough
to have you."

She turned away and broke at once into her easy stride. Nan stood a
minute watching her. Then something came up in her, a surge of human
love, the pity of it all--Tira, Raven, the world, and perhaps a little
of it Nan--and she ran after her. The tears were splashing down her face
and blurring the bright day.

"Tira!" she called, and, as she came up with her, "darling Tira!"

"Why," said Tira, "you're cryin'! Don't you cry, darlin'. I never so
much as thought I'd make you cry."

They put their arms about each other and their cheeks were together, wet
with Nan's tears, and then--Nan thought afterward it was Tira who did
it--they kissed, and loosed each other and were parted. Nan went home
shaken, trembling, the tears unquenchably coming, and now she did not
turn to look.

XLIV

Nan was very tired. She went to bed soon after dark and slept deeply.
But she woke with the first dawn, roused into a full activity of mind
that in itself startled her. There was the robin outside her window--was
it still that one robin who had nothing to do but show you how bravely
he could sing?--and she had an irritated feeling he had tried to call
her. Her room was on the east and the dawn was still gray. She lay
looking at it a minute perhaps after her eyes came open: frightened,
that was it, frightened. Things seemed to have been battering at her
brain in the night, and all the windows of her mind had been closed, the
shutters fast, and they could not get in. But now the light was coming
and they kept on battering. And whatever they wanted, she was
frightened, too frightened to give herself the panic of thinking it
over, finding out what she was frightened about; but she got up and
hurried through her dressing, left a line on her pillow for the maid and
went downstairs, out into a dewy morning. She had taken her coat, her
motor cap and gloves. Once in the road she started to run, and then
remembered she must not pass Tenney's running, as if the world were
afire, as things were in her mind. But she did walk rapidly, and
glancing up when she was opposite the house, saw the front door open as