"Good Lord, Nan," said Raven, "where do you get such thoughts?"
"Get them?" she repeated. "I got them from you first. You've been a slave all your life. Don't you know you have? Don't you know you had cobwebs spun round you, round and round, till she had you tight, hand and foot, not hers but so you couldn't walk off to anybody else? And even now, after her death——"
"Stop," said Raven. "That's enough, Nan."
Again Anne Hamilton was beside them on the wintry road, and they were hurting her inexpressibly.
"That's it," said Nan. "You're afraid she'll hear."
"If I am," said Raven, "it's not——" There he stopped.
"No," said Nan. She had relented. Her eyes were soft. "You're not afraid of her. But you are afraid of hurting her. And even that's weak, Rookie—in a man. Don't be so pitiful. Leave it to the women."
Raven laughed a little now. Again she seemed a child, crying after the swashbuckling hero modern man has put into the discard, where apparently he has to stay, except now and then when he ventures out and struts a little. But it avails him nothing. Somebody laughs, and back he has to go.
"I am pretty stupid," he said. "But never mind about an old stager like me. Don't be afraid of showing him—the man, I mean—all your charm. Don't be afraid of going to his head. You've got enough to justify every possible hope you could hold out to him. You're the loveliest—Nan, you're the loveliest thing I ever saw."
"The loveliest?" said Nan, again recklessly. "Lovelier than Tira?"