"It ain't," she said, in a low voice, "it ain't that I don't keep in mind what you've done for me, what you're doin' all the time. But I guess you don't see what you've done this night's the most of all. Now you've told me you know it's true"—here she was shy before the talk of god-head—"why, I know it's so, too. An' I sha'n't ever be afraid any more. I sha'n't ever feel alone."
"But Tira," he felt himself saying to her weakly, "I feel alone."
Did he actually say it, he wondered. No, for he lifted his face from his shielding hand and turned miserable eyes upon her, and her eyes met him clearly. Yet they were deeper, softer, moved by a sad compassion. There was something patiently maternal in them, as if she had found herself again before the old sad question of man's uncomprehended desires. She spoke, strangely he thought then, and afterward he wondered if she actually had said the thing at all.
"There's nothin' in the world I wouldn't do for you, not if 'twas anyways right. But——" and again she gave that fleeting glance of allegiance to the child.
He tried impatiently to pull himself together. She must see there was something hideous in his inability to make her safe, something stupid, also.
"Tira," he said, "you don't understand. Sometimes I think you don't realize what might happen to you. And it's silly to let it happen, foolish, ignorant. If some one told you there was a man outside your door and he wanted to kill you, you'd lock the door. Now there's a man inside your house, inside your room, that wants to kill you. Yes, he does," he insisted, answering the denial in her face, "when he's got one of his brain storms. Is there anything to pride yourself on in staying to be killed?"
She answered first with a smile, the sweet reassurance of a confident look.
"He won't," she said, "he won't try to kill me, or kill him"—she made a movement of the hand toward the couch—"no, not ever. You know why? I'm goin' to remind him Who's in the room."
"Why didn't you remind him this time?" Raven queried, pushed to the cynical logic of it. "You could have turned his own words against him. It wasn't an hour since he'd said it himself."
"Because," she answered, in a perfect good faith, "then I didn't know 'twas so."