"Lots of 'em," said Raven. "The money." His voice sounded to her as if he cursed it, and again he pulled himself up. "What are we going to do with it?" "Aunt Anne's," she said, not as a question but a confirmation. "Yes. I can't refuse it. That means throwing it back on you. If I won't decide, I'm simply making you do it for me. I don't see anything for it but our talking the thing out and making up our minds together." "No," said Nan. "I sha'n't help you." "You won't?" "I suppose it amounts to that." "Now why the dickens not?" Nan kept up her stare at the fire. She seemed to be debating deeply, even painfully. "Rookie," she said, at last, in a tumultuous rush, "I never meant to say this. I don't know what'll come of saying it. But you've had a terrible sort of life. It's almost worse than any life I know. You've been smothered--by women." This last she said with difficulty, and Raven reddened, in a reflecting shame. "You've done what they expected you to. And it's all been because you're too kind. And too humble. You think it doesn't matter very much what happens to you." "You've hit it there," said Raven, with a sudden distaste for himself. "It doesn't." "And if I could clear your way of every sort of bugbear just by deciding things for you, I wouldn't do it." "Don't try to change my destiny," said Raven, plucking up spirit to laugh at her and lead her away from this unexpected clarity of analysis that could only mean pain for both of them. "I'm old, dear. I'm not very malleable, very plastic. We're not, at forty-odd." "And if," said Nan deliberately, "I loved you better, yes, even better than I do (if I could!) I wouldn't tell you. It would be putting bonds on you. It would be setting up the old slavery. The more I loved you, the more I should be taking over the old tyranny: direct succession, Rookie, don't you see?" Here she laughed, though with some slight bitterness, and he did see. Aunt Anne had ruled his life, to the drying up of normal springs in it. Nan didn't mean to accept the inheritance. He was profoundly touched, by her giving so much grave thought to it, at least. "But, dearest child," he said, "what does it matter now? I'm rather a meager person. You couldn't dress me up with attributes, out of your dear mind. I shouldn't know how to wear 'em. I'm no end grateful to you for wanting to. But if you gave me the earth for a football now I'm too stiff to kick it. It's a curve, life is. Don't you know that? You're on the up-grade, you and Dick. I may not have got very far, but I'm on the down." "And yet," said Nan, turning and laying a finger on the book at her side, "you can read a thing like that, a man's life turned inside out for you to see, and understand what he meant by it, and then say the game's up. You make me tired." If he made her tired, she made him unaffectedly surprised. "But, Nan," he said, "I didn't know you caught on so tremendously to the old chap. I didn't know it meant so very much to you."