"Where shall we go?" she asked him. "Been to the hut lately?"
No, Raven told her, he hadn't been there for days. They crossed the road and began the ascent into the woods.
"So you don't know whether she's been there?" Nan asked. She stopped to breathe in the wood fragrances, coming now like a surprise. She had almost forgotten "outdoors."
"Yes," said Raven. "I know. Sometimes I fancy she won't need to go there again. Tenney's a wreck. He sits there in the kitchen and doesn't speak. He isn't thinking about her. He's thinking of himself."
"How do you know? You haven't been over?"
"Yes, I went over the morning after the shooting. I intended to tell Tira to get her things on and come down to the house. But when I saw him—saw them—I couldn't."
"You were sorry for him?" Nan prompted.
They had reached the hut, and Raven took out the key from under the stone. Close by, there was a velvet fern frond ready to unfurl. He unlocked the door and they went in. Her last question he did not answer until he had thrown up windows and brought out chairs to the veranda at the west. When they were seated, he went on probing for his past impression and speaking thoughtfully.
"No, I don't know that I was particularly sorry for him. But somehow the two of them there together, with that poor little devil between them—well, it seemed to me I couldn't separate them. That's marriage, I suppose. Anyhow it looked to me like it: something you couldn't undo because they wouldn't have it undone."
Nan turned on him her old impetuous look.