"Didn't know 'twas so? Why didn't you?"
Her eyes were large with wonder.
"Because," she said, "then you hadn't told me."
Raven stared at her a full minute, realizing to the full the exact measure of his lie coming back to him.
"Tira," said he, "I believe you're not quite bright."
"No," said she simply, with no apparent feeling, "I guess I ain't. 'Most everybody's told me so, first or last."
It sobered him.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I didn't mean that. I'm off my head a little. I'm so worried, you see. I want to know you're safe. You're not safe. It isn't easy to accept that—to lie down under it."
Usually he had spoken to her in the homespun phrasing he instinctively used with his country neighbors, but the last words were subtly different to her, they were more distant, and she accepted them with a grave humility.
"Yes, sir," she said, and Raven awoke to the irritating knowledge that she was calling him "sir." He smiled at her and she realized that, as mysteriously as she had been pushed away, now she was taken back.