Nothing he didn't know! The irony of that was so innocently piercing that he almost broke into a laugh. Nan was right then. Tira did regard him, if not as an archangel, as something scarcely less authoritative. He turned and went back to the fire, threw on an armful of sticks, and stood looking into the blaze.
"What makes you say that?" he asked her. "What makes you think I know?"
"Why," said she, in a patent surprise, "'course you know. I've always heard about you, writin' books an' all. An' that's the kind you be, too. You're"—she paused to marshal her few words and ended in an awed tone—"you're that way, too. When folks are in trouble, you're so sorry it 'most kills you."
This was a blow staggering enough to hit his actual heart and stop it for a beat. What if he should say to her: "Yes, I do care. I care when you are hurt. I don't know about the God made man, but isn't my caring enough for you?"
Then bitter certainties cut in and told him it wouldn't do. She had learned her world lesson too terribly well. It would be only another case of man's pursuing, promising—what had they promised in the past? And after all, he thought recklessly, what did the private honor of his testifying yes or no amount to anyway? What moral conceit! To save his own impeccable soul by denying a woman the one consolation that would save her reason.
"Yes, Tira," he said quietly, and did not know he had used her name, "it's all true."
She gave a little sound, half sob, half ecstatic breath, and he saw she had not been sure he would yield her the bright jewel she had begged of him.
"True!" she said, in the low tone of an almost somnolently brooding calm. "All of it! Everywhere!"
"Yes," said Raven steadily, "everywhere."
"Over there where He was born, here!" That seemed to amaze her to a glory of belief. "Why, if He's everywhere, He's here, too."