"Well," said Nan, and now she spoke with an edge in her voice, "what's she going to do about it? She's in danger of her life, you say." He nodded absently, his mind going back to that word, lucky. "She's afraid of her husband, afraid he'll kill her." "Not so much that as afraid he'll kill the child." "Well, then, isn't she going to leave him?" "No. She won't." "Have you asked her?" "Oh, yes," said Raven. "I asked her at once. I told her I'd send her away from here, find her something to do: just what anybody'd say in a case like that." "And she wouldn't let you?" "She wouldn't let me." "Why not?" asked Nan. "Does she--love the brute?" She might have flicked a lash across his face and his nerves winced under it. There was, she saw, in his mind, something disparaging to the woman in coupling her with a softness misplaced. "I don't know," he said, with a thoughtful precision. "Sometimes I think she's all mother: doesn't care about anything but the child. I know she's square, knew it at once, but that doesn't mean I know any more about her. She's a locked door to me." His tone was low, but it told Nan how he wished the door would open and let him in to persuade her to her own well-being. She looked at him a moment, as he stood staring down at his feet where a ragged wisp of yellowed brake came through the snow, looked as if he hurt her beyond endurance, and yet she had to probe ill circumstance to its depths. Then she spoke, but in her old voice of childlike gentleness toward him: "I see. I really believe, Rookie, I do see." He looked up at her in a palpable relief. "That's a good girl," he said. Again she was half child to him. "You'll take a hand, too, won't you?" That was more than she had bargained for. She would believe in the mysterious woman and leave him free to carry out any mission, however sophistical or chivalrous, he would. But she had not expected to enter the arena with him and defend the martyr thrown to the wild beast of marital savagery. Raven felt her recoil. "I can't do anything for her," he pursued, with a discouragement she read. "Anything real, that is. I can give her the shelter of the hut, but he'll find that out some day and go crashing in. I can't be there always. Fact is, I can't be there at all." "Yes," said Nan. "I see." There was in her voice a sweetness new to him. "I'll do anything you say, Rookie, to make your mind easy. What do you want me to do. Take her away from here?" He considered a moment. Yes, that was really what he did want. She had put the words into his mouth. "But," said Nan practically, "what you've got to do now is to go down to the house and be tried for your life. Your sister'll be there something after two. And Dick. And the alienist." Raven shrugged his shoulders as if he shook them free of a burden. "I don't care anything about the alienist," he said. "Nor Dick. I do care a lot about Amelia. She's an awful bore. But it can't be helped. Come on down."