She shook her head.
"Why wouldn't you?" he urged, and then she did answer, not ungraciously, but with a shy courtesy:
"I didn't feel to."
"It would be"—he hesitated for a word and found an ineffectual one—"nice, if you could talk to her. She wouldn't tell."
"I don't," said Tira, still with the same gentle obstinacy, "hold much with talkin'."
Raven, because he had her to himself and the time was short, determined not to spare her for lack of a searching word.
"Tira," he said, and she smiled a little, mysteriously to him but really because she loved to hear him use her name, "things aren't getting any better here. They're getting worse."
"Oh, no," she hastened to say. "They're better."
"Only last night you had to run away from him."
"Things are ever so much better," said Tira, smiling at him, with a radiance of conviction that lighted her face to a new sort of beauty. "They're all right. I've found the Lord."