"No use," said Nan. "She won't go. I asked her, told her I was living over at the house alone, wanted company. No use. She wouldn't go."
"She must go."
"She won't, I tell you. Then I asked if she'd let me stay over here and she said no. She said——"
"What?" urged Raven when she stopped.
"I almost can't tell, it's so pathetic. Just a word—three words: 'You don't know.' Then she stopped. Just that: 'You don't know.'"
Raven gave a little sound she could not bear, a breath, a curse—what was it? Anyway, the breaking impatience of a helpless man. He did not stir. He meant, she saw, to stay there, doggedly stay, on the step, to await what happened. She put her hand through his arm.
"Come," she said authoritatively, "let's walk up the road and drop in again when they've all gone. It's no use staying now."
That, he saw, was wise, and they went out into the road, waited a moment for the sleighs just starting, and then walked away from home. Some of the people were singing "camp-meeting hymns," and there was one daring burst of "Good night, ladies," and a chorused laugh. Prayer-meeting at Tenney's was not, Raven concluded, regarded much more seriously than Charlotte had foreseen. The bells jingled off into the distance. The horses were bent on home. As if the sound only had torn up the night into shreds of commotion, so now the bits of silence drew together into a web and the web covered them. Nan, in spite of the perplexed question of Tira, could have settled under the web, there with Raven, as under wings. But he was hot with impatience. They had gone half a mile perhaps, when he stopped.
"Come back," he said. "I've got to know."
Nan turned with him and they went on in silence but very fast. Once or twice she was about asking him not to take such long steps, but she set her teeth and swung forward. In front of Tenney's they stopped. The rooms were lighted. The house was still. Raven drew a deep breath. What he had expected he did not know, whether calls for help or Tenney's voice of the woods shouting, "Hullo!" This, at any rate, was a reprieve.