"And you suggest," said Raven, "my kidnaping a nice New England woman and her baby and carting them off to the Malay Peninsula."
Nan turned upon him delightedly. He could not know what he did for her by juggling the Tira myth into raillery.
"But think, Rookie," she said, "a woman so beautiful she's more than that. She's mystery. Now, isn't she beautiful?"
"Beautiful," Raven agreed, and the picture of her, madonna-like, in the woods, suddenly smote the eyes of his mind and blinded them to all but Tira.
She saw him wince, and went on more falteringly, but still determined to go all the way.
"Into a new world, Rookie, all ferns and palms."
"And snakes!"
"Perfectly honest, perfectly free, and no jungle except the kind that grows up in a night."
"And you," said Raven, "with your New England traditions and your inherited panic over a cigarette!"
They looked at each other across the length of the hearth, and it all seemed delightfully funny to them—their solitude, their oneness of mind—and they began to laugh. And at the combined shout of their merriment (almost competitive it was, in the eagerness of each to justify the particular preciousness of the moment) the door opened and Dick came in, halted, stared, in a surprise that elicited one last hoot at the unexpectedness of things, and indulged himself in a satirical comment of greeting, far from what he had intended. Poor Dick! he was always making sage resolutions on the chance of finding Raven and Nan together, but the actuality as inevitably overthrew him.