"Not yet," said Raven. "I've got something to tell you."
"What's it about?"
"Old Crow."
Nan thought a minute.
"All right," she said. She looked at once unreasonably happy, like, he extravagantly thought, a beautiful statue with the fountain of life playing over it. "I'll come—for Old Crow."
"Pick up your duds," said he, "and I'll go along and see if I can make anything out of her. You be ready when I come back."
Nan looked after him and thought how fast he walked and how Tira, as well as Tira's troubles, drew him. If Tira knew the power of her own beauty, how terribly decisive a moment this would be in the great dark kitchen Nan had just left! And yet if Tira, having looked in her mirror and the mirror of life, were cruelly sophisticated enough to play that part, the man would be given odds to resist her. He was no ingenuous youth.
XXV
Raven walked up to the side door of the house and knocked. She came at once, her face blank of any expectation, though at seeing him she did stand a little tenser and her lips parted with a quicker breath.