Tenney would want his dinner! He had no words for that. He turned away. But she seemed to feel the finality of his going. Was he giving her up? She put the child down on the couch and turned to follow. Raven was just closing the door.
"Don't!" she cried. There was piercing entreaty in her voice. "Don't!"
It was really begging him not to give her up, and though he did not clearly understand it so, he knew he was forcing on her something to bear, in addition to all the rest. She must not think that of him. She must feel safe, in whatever manner it was easiest for her to accept safety. He smiled back at her in that way Anne Hamilton, when she had caught him smiling at Nan, thought so maddeningly beautiful. Poor Anne! She had starved for the sweetness of what seemed to her, in her hunger of the heart, an almost benedictory tenderness.
"Don't you worry," he said to Tira, in the phrasing he unconsciously adopted to her. "Everything's going to be exactly as you want it. Only," he added whimsically—a tone she had never heard in her life before—"if I could have my say for a few hours, it would be to find you here when I come back."
He closed the door and hurried down the path, moved even beyond his pity by the certainty that she was nearer him. She had accepted that strange community of interest between them. She had to be saved and he was to save her. Now it would be easier. He had no thought but to find Nan down at the house, but two-thirds of the way along the path he saw her, sitting on a slant of the great boulder and looking grave. She was not the Nan who had come to the hut, a half hour ago, so gaily certain of her welcome. The two women had shied at the sight of each other. He had cleared up the situation for the one, and now he had to do it for Nan. That was simple. He had never known her to fail in understanding. He came up to her and she raised her eyes, earnest now, startled, to his.
"Aren't you too cold there?" he asked.
She shook her head and smiled a little.
"No, not with my fur. I'm afraid the gray squirrels will see me. What would they think of skinning so many of their little brothers?"
"Nan," he said, "you saw her."
She nodded, slid off the rock and stood there, not looking at him. Of course she saw her, Nan's inner self was answering. Didn't they meet face to face? But she knew this was but his beginning and she would not challenge it. He plunged into the turmoil of Tira's affairs, foreign to him so short a time ago and yet his.