He was insatiate in his desire to understand her.
"And you mean," he said, with a directness he was willing to tincture with a cruelty sharp enough to serve, "to send the child off somewhere where he will be safe, and then live here with this brute, have more children by him——"
"No! no!" she cried sharply. "Not that! don't you say that to me. I can't bear it. Not from you! My God help me! not from you."
He understood her. She loved him. He was set apart by her overwhelming belief in him, but she was in all ways, the ways of the flesh as well as the spirit, consecrated to him. Her body might become the prey of man's natural cruelty, and yet, while she wept her tears of blood in this unreasoning slavery, she held one worship. There he would be alone. The insight of the awakened mind told him another thing: that, in spite of her despairing loyalty, he could conquer her scruples. He could, by the sheer weight of a loving will, force her to follow him. A warm entreaty, one word of his own need, and she would answer. And while he thought, the jungle feeling came upon him, hot, hateful to his conscious mind, the feeling of the complexity of it all, strange beasts of emotion out for prey, the reason drugged with nature's sophistries. The jungle! That was what Nan had called it, this welter of human misery. Who else had been talking to him about it? Why, Old Crow! He had not called it the jungle, but he had been lost in its tortuous ways. This prescience to Old Crow brought a queer feeling, as if a cool air blew on him. The jungle feeling passed. Almost he had the vision of an eternal city, built up by the broken but never wholly failing strength of man, and Old Crow there beckoning him into it and telling him he'd kept a place for him. And the cool breeze which was Old Crow told him that although Tira must be rescued, if it could be brought about, it must not be through any of the jungle ways. She must not be drugged by jungle odors and carried off unwillingly, even to the Holy City itself, by that road. He and Tira—yes, he and Tira and Nan—would march along together with their eyes open. He hastened to speak, to commit himself to what he must deliberately wish:
"Then we'll telephone Nan."
She looked at him, all gratitude. Her friend had gone away into strange dark corners of life where only her instinct followed him, and here he was back again.
"No," she said, "don't you telephone. Somebody'd listen in. You write. I guess mebbe nothin'll happen right off, even if I did burn the crutch. I guess I got kinder beside myself to-night. I ain't likely to be so ag'in."
"I'll walk up to the hut with you," said Raven, rising as she did, "and see you safe inside."
"No," said she, "I couldn't let you no ways. It's bad enough as 'tis."
By this she meant the paragraph in the paper which had laid an insulting finger on him; but he had not seen it and did not understand. Only it was plain to him that she would not let him go. She drew her hood up, and made it secure under her chin. Then she looked at him and smiled a little. She had to smile, her woman's instinct told her, to reassure him. She opened the door, and though he followed her quickly, had slipped through the outer door as softly and was gone. He stood there on the sill watching her hurrying to the road. When she had turned to the right, she began to run, and he went down the path after her to look up the road, lest she had seen something pursuing her. But the night was still. There was no sound of footsteps on the snow, and the far-off barking of a fox made the silence more complete. She was only hurrying, because her mother heart had wakened suddenly to the loneliness of the child up there among the pillows, torturing herself with wonders that she could leave him. He went out into the road and continued on her track, until he saw her turn into the woods. Then, waiting until she should be far enough in advance not to catch the sound of his pursuit, he suddenly heard footsteps on the road and turned. A man was coming rapidly. It was Dick.