She smiled upon him, giving him an ineffable sense that she had, in telling him, somehow dropped her burden. Now she said, with as calm a resolution as that of the martyr marching to the fire he is sure his Lord has called him to:
"I'll go down along."
She went over to the couch, took up the child, and began to tuck about him the folds of her enveloping blanket. Raven moved to her side. He had an overwhelming sense of their being at one in the power of their resolution. If she would yield to his deliberate judgment! if only their resolutions could coincide!
"No," he said, "you're not going down there. I won't have it."
She looked at him and faintly smiled.
"I've got to," she said. "If I stay away all night an' he don't know where, there wouldn't be any way o' piecin' on."
And suddenly he knew, if she was to persist in "piecing on," she was right.
"Wait," he said. "Let me think."
There must be some way, he reflected, some means, by violence or diplomacy, to help her fulfill the outer rites of her bargain until he could persuade her to be taken beyond the reach of persecution. He wanted to fight for her; but if that was not the way, if his fists would only bruise her as well as Tenney, he was ready to lie. He had his idea. It might be good, it might not, but it was an emergency idea.
"I'll go down," he said. "I'll go over to your house and offer to pay him for his week's work. You follow. Give me time enough to go into my house on the way and get some money. Then you come while I'm talking to him and I'll stay a bit, as long as I can. When you come, we can see how he is. If he's violent to you—if he looks it, even—you've got to come away."