But he realized, as if it were another trial setting upon him at the moment when he had borne enough, that his eyes were suddenly hot. This was not for Milly, not for himself. Again, for some obscure reason, he saw Dick's eyes, softened, childlike, as he had recalled them without their glasses. Through these past weeks of strain, he had been irritated with the boy, he had jeered at him for the extravagances of his gusty youth. Why, the boy was only a boy, after all! But Milly, leaning forward to the fire, her trembling hands over the blaze, was talking with amazing intensity, but still quietly, not to disturb the stillness of the expectant house. For the house, suddenly changed, seemed itself to be waiting, as houses do in time of trouble. Was it for Dick to die or to take on life again? Houses are seldom kind at such times, even in their outward tranquillity. They are sinister. And when Milly began to speak, Raven found he had to deal with a woman surprisingly different from the one who had striven to heal him through her borrowed aphorisms. "To think," she began, "to think he should escape, after being over there--over there, John, in blood and dirt and death--and come home to be shot in the back by a tramp with a gun! Where is the man? You detained him, didn't you? Don't tell me you let him go." "I know where to find him," Raven temporized. "He'd no idea of going." She insisted. "You think it was an accident? He couldn't have had a grudge. Dick hadn't an enemy." "You can make your mind easy about that," said Raven, taking refuge in a detached sincerity. "It wasn't meant for Dick. He was as far from the fellow's thoughts as the moon." He remembered the fringe of somber woods and the curve of the new moon. "It isn't so much the misfortunes of life," Milly kept on. She was beating her knee now with one closed hand and her voice kept time. "It's the chances, the horrible way things come and knock you down because you're in their path. If he doesn't"--here she stopped and Raven knew she added, in her own mind, "if he doesn't live--I shall never believe in anything again. Never, John, never!" Raven was silent, not only because it seemed well for her to free her mind, but because he had a sudden curiosity to hear more. This was Milly outside her armor at last. When she had caught him out of his armor, she had proposed sending him to the Psychopathic, and here she was herself, raving against heaven and earth as unrestrainedly as a savage woman might beat her head against a cliff. "Chance!" she repeated. "That's what it is, chance! He got in the way and he was struck. I lived through the War. I gave my son. What more could I do? But now, to have him come home to our old house and be shot in the back! How can you sit there and not move a muscle or say a word? What are you thinking about?" "Well," said Raven quietly, "if you'll believe me, I'm thinking about you. I'm mighty sorry for you, Milly. And I'm keeping one ear cocked for Nan."