"You mean," said Raven, "I've gone off my nut."
Dick did not answer, but there could be no doubt of his own mental excitement, and he was apprehensive in a measure that moved Raven to an amused compassion. Raven sat looking at him a long minute. Then he got up and took his newspaper from the table beside him.
"Come," he said. "We'll go into the library and see if we can get anywhere."
Dick followed him, and they sat down together by the fire, this after Raven had moved a third chair into the space between them. He smiled at himself as he did it. It was the chair Nan had sat in the night before. He had a foolish feeling that he was invoking her remembered presence, calling on her to help them out.
"Now, Dick," he began, when they were seated, "you said something about my letter's not being normal. What is normal, when you come to that?"
Dick frowned into the fire. This, he felt, had some hidden leading, and he wasn't going to be caught.
"What's the use of asking fool questions?" he inquired, in his turn. "You know."
"Can't help it," said Raven. "I've got to be Socratic. Help me out, old man. Let me have my little game. What is normal?"
"Why," said Dick, floundering, "I suppose it's what the general run of people think—and do. It's keeping to the rules. It's trotting on the course. It isn't going off at some tangent of your own."
Dick felt rather proud of this, its fluency and general appositeness. He plucked up his spirits, thinking he might be going to manage Raven, after all.