"Do you mean to tell me," countered Dick, "you're not bluffing? Or do you actually want to let her marry me and you—you'd continue this under my nose?"
Raven stared at him a full minute, and Dick angrily met him. "Stare away," Dick was thinking. "I'm in the right. I can look you down."
"Dick," said Raven finally, "I called you a fool. It isn't such a bad thing to be a fool. We're most of us fools, of one sort or another. But don't let me think you're a dirty-minded little cad. Now I don't want to bring Nan into this, but I rather think I've got to. What are you driving at? Come, out with it!"
To his wonderment, his pain amounting to a shock of perplexity and grief, he saw Dick's face redden and the tears spring to his eyes. How horribly the boy cared, perhaps up to the measure of Nan's deserts, and yet with what a childish lack of values! For he had no faith either in Nan or in old Jack. The ties of blood, of friendship, were not holding. He was as jealous as Othello, and no sane certainties were standing him in stead. Dick, feeling the painful tears, felt also the shame of them. He wanted to answer on the instant, now Raven had given him his chance; but so unused was he to the menace of betraying emotion that he was not even sure of not blubbering like a boy. He swallowed and came out with it:
"You've got some sort of hold on her nobody else has. You've hynotized her. She eats out of your hand."
Raven, in despair, sat looking at him. He ought, he felt, to be able to laugh it all away, but he was too bewildered and too sorry.
"Dick," said he finally, "I shall have to say it again. You're an awful fool. Nan and I were always the best of friends. I rather think I have known her in a way none of the rest of you have. But—hypnotized her! Look at me, Dick. Remember me plodding along while you grew up; think what sort of a chap I am. You won't find anything spectacular about me. Never has been, never will be. And Nan, of all people! little Nan!"
Dick forgot the imminence of a breaking voice and humid eyes. Raven, he felt, wasn't playing the game. He was skulking out of it.
"Do you deny," he said, in a voice so loud and hoarse that it startled him as it did Raven, "that you're in love with her?"
"Good God!" said Raven. He rose, laid his pipe on the mantel and stood, trembling, even in his clenched hands. "What is there to answer," he got out at length, "to a question like that? You've just reminded me I'm past my youth. Why don't you remember it yourself when it'll do you some good? I'm an old chap, and you——"