"Come and have breakfast," he said. "Charlotte's bringing it in."
They went together, and when Dick had bolted his coffee and egg he said:
"Of course I've got to take the 11.03."
"Of course," said Raven. He knew if he were a young lover who had offended Nan and driven her away, that was what he should do: follow and humble himself before her. "Jerry'll drive you down."
So it happened that when Amelia, carefully dressed, came out of her room at noon, Dick had left without a word to her and her dignified resentment was only diverted by hearing Nan, too, had gone.
"John," said she, disposing herself by the fire, "I should like to know how you account for that girl?"
"For Nan?" said Raven absently. He was wishing Nan had found it easy to tell him she was going. "I don't account for Nan. I don't have to."
"So unexpected," said Amelia. "So absolutely impervious to everything we've brought them up to reverence. It's all of a piece. Depend upon it, no young girl could go over there and do the things she did and not feel the effects of it: for life, absolutely for life. You yourself feel the effects in one way, the young ones in another."
Raven was very considerate of her, left stranded there with him. But after the noon dinner, when they settled again by the fire, he began to realize the magnitude of his task. He was simply saddled with Amelia. She hadn't been able to get her alienist up here, but she had constituted herself a psychic detective on her own account. At first he didn't mind, she was so "simple honest" in her expedients. It was amusing, to a moderate degree, to evade them. How did he sleep? Did he dream? Did he know anything about the psychology of dreams? There was Freud.
"Yes," Raven interpolated. "Nasty fellow. Peeps and botanizes on his mother's grave."