"Rookie," she said, "you are nearer an absolute fool than any human being I ever saw. If I wanted a man back, it's likely I could get him. Most of us can. But do you think I would?" "Then you're proud, sillykins." "I'm not proud," said Nan--and yet proudly. "If I loved anybody, I'd let him walk over me. That's what Charlotte would say. Can't you hear her? It isn't for my sake. It's for his. Do you think I'd bamboozle him and half beckon and half persuade, the way women do, and trap him into the great enchantment? It is an enchantment. You know it is. But I'd rather he'd keep his grip on things--on himself--and walk away from me, if that's where it took him. I'd rather he'd walk straight off to somebody else, and break his heart, if it came that way." "Good Lord, Nan," said Raven, "where do you get such thoughts?" "Get them?" she repeated. "I got them from you first. You've been a slave all your life. Don't you know you have? Don't you know you had cobwebs spun round you, round and round, till she had you tight, hand and foot, not hers but so you couldn't walk off to anybody else? And even now, after her death----" "Stop," said Raven. "That's enough, Nan." Again Anne Hamilton was beside them on the wintry road, and they were hurting her inexpressibly. "That's it," said Nan. "You're afraid she'll hear." "If I am," said Raven, "it's not----" There he stopped. "No," said Nan. She had relented. Her eyes were soft. "You're not afraid of her. But you are afraid of hurting her. And even that's weak, Rookie--in a man. Don't be so pitiful. Leave it to the women." Raven laughed a little now. Again she seemed a child, crying after the swashbuckling hero modern man has put into the discard, where apparently he has to stay, except now and then when he ventures out and struts a little. But it avails him nothing. Somebody laughs, and back he has to go. "I am pretty stupid," he said. "But never mind about an old stager like me. Don't be afraid of showing him--the man, I mean--all your charm. Don't be afraid of going to his head. You've got enough to justify every possible hope you could hold out to him. You're the loveliest--Nan, you're the loveliest thing I ever saw." "The loveliest?" said Nan, again recklessly. "Lovelier than Tira?" For an instant she struck him dumb. Was Tira so lovely? To him certainly she had a beauty almost inexpressible. But was it really inherent in her? Or was it something in the veil he found about her, that haze of hopeless suffering? "Do you think she's beautiful?" His voice was keen; curiosity had thinned it to an edge. Nan answered it with exactness.