eaving a presence, he stepped back into the entry, and Nan understood
that he was not even carrying with him the memory of her great majesty
of beauty. She thought she understood. Even Tira's face was to be left
covered. She was to be inviolate from the eyes of men. In a few minutes
he had brought round the car, Nan had arranged things with Mrs.
Donnyhill, and they drove out into the day--blazing now, like
midsummer--and so home. And all the way they did not speak, until,
passing Tenney's, the door open and the house with a strange look of
being asleep in the sun, Nan said:

"Leave me here. I'll see him and then go on."

Raven did not answer. He drove past, to her own gate, and Nan,
understanding she was not to move further in any direction, got out.
Raven, perhaps feeling his silence had been unmerciful to her, spoke
quietly:

"Run and get a bath and a sleep. I'll see him. I'll come for you if
you're needed."

He turned the car and drove back, and Nan went in to her waiting house.
Raven stopped before Tenney's and, since the front door was open, halted
there and knocked. No answer. Then he went round to the side door and
knocked again, and called out several times, and the sound of his voice
brought back to him, like a sickness, the memory of Tenney's catamount
yell when he had heard it that day in the woods. No answer. The house
was asleep and a calf blared from the barn. He went back to the car,
drove home, and found Jerry waiting in the yard and Charlotte at the
door. Dick was in his chair down under the trees, his mother beside him,
reading. It was so unusual to see Amelia there that Raven wondered
idly--not that it mattered--he could meet a regiment of Amelias with
this callousness upon him--if Dick had beguiled her away so that she
might not pounce on him when he returned. He got out of the car stiffly.
He was, he felt at that instant, an old man. But if physical ineptitude
meant age, Jerry and Charlotte were also old, for Jerry was bewildered
beyond the possibility of speech and Charlotte shaken out of her calm.

"You come into the kitchen," she said, and Raven followed her, and sank
into a chair, set his elbows on the table, and leaned his head in his
hands. He was very tired, but Mrs. Donnyhill's boiled tea was inexorably
keeping him up. Charlotte, standing above him, put her hand on his
shoulder.

"Johnnie," she said, "Isr'el Tenney's been here. He wants you to give
him back his gun."

"Oh," said Rav