This was the night Raven had had his premonition of her and gone up to the hut to find her, and the next night he was aware of her again, as if she had put a hand out through the darkness and given him an imploring touch. He and Dick had had an almost jovial day. Their wrestling bout had proved sound medicine. It had, Raven thought, cleared the air of the fool things they had been thinking about each other. This evening they had talked, straight talk, as between men, chiefly of Dick's future and his fitness for literature. There was no hint of Nan, though each believed she was the pivot on which Dick's fortunes turned. About ten they went up to bed, and again Raven found himself too uneasy to sleep, and again he sat down by the window in the dark. Incredibly, yet as he found he knew it would happen, he saw a figure running up the path. It came almost to the front door, halted a moment, as if in doubt, stooped and threw up a clutch of snow against a window. The snow was full of icy pellets; they rattled against the pane. But it was not his window, which was dark; the hand had cast its signaling pellets to the room where a light was burning and where the outline of a man's figure had just been visible. And the man was Dick. But Raven knew. He opened his door and shut it as softly, stole down the stairs, opened the outer door, and drew her in. Then, in the instant of snapping on the light, he saw Tira recoil; for there, at the foot of the stairs, was Dick. She would have slipped out again, but Raven's hand was on her. He still held hers, as he had taken it, and now he turned her to the library door. It was all done quickly, and meantime he said to Dick, "Go back to bed," and Dick perhaps not responding exactly, commented under his breath, "Good God!" Raven followed Tira into the library, turned the key in the lock, switched on the light in his reading lamp, and drew a chair to the smouldering fire.
"Sit down," he said. "You must get warm."
He threw on cones and roused a leaping blaze. Then he made himself look at her. He forgot Dick and Dick's shocked bewilderment. He was calm as men are calm in an accomplished certainty. She had come. She did not seem cold or in any sense excited, though she put her hands to the blaze and bent toward it absently, as if in courtesy because he had given it to her. As she sat, drawing long breaths that meant the ebbing of emotion, he let his eyes feed on her face. She was paler than he had seen her. There were shadows under her eyes, and the lashes on her cheek looked incredibly long: a curved inky splash. Her hood had fallen back, but she kept the blue cloak about her to her chin, as if it made a seclusion, a protection even against him. But it was only an instant before she withdrew her hands from the blaze and turned to him, with a little smile. She began to speak at once, as if she had scant time, either for indulging her own weakness or troubling him.
"You'll think it's queer," she said. "I've come here routin' you out o' bed when you've give me that nice place up there to run away to."
Raven found himself ready to break out into asseverations that it was the only natural thing for her to do. Where should she go, if not to him?
"No," he said, the more gravely because he was counseling himself while he answered her. "You did right. But," he added, "where's——?"
She understood. Where was the baby who always made the reason for her flight?
"He's up there," she answered, with a motion of her hand toward the road.
"In the hut?" he exclaimed. "You left him there?"
It seemed impossible.