"I don't know," he said, "precisely what I do want. If you told me Old Crow didn't want anything but giving folks a boost, I'm with you there. He actually didn't. You can tell from his book." "I can't seem to bear it," said Nan. She was looking at the darkening woods and her wet eyes blurred them more than the falling dusk. "It isn't healthy. It isn't right. I want you to want things like fury, and I don't know whether I should care so very much if you banged yourself up pretty well not getting them. And if you actually got them! O Rookie! I'd be so glad." "You're a dear child," said Raven, "a darling child." "That's it," said Nan. "If you didn't think I was a child, perhaps you'd want me. O Rookie! I wish you wanted me!" Into Raven's mind flashed the picture of Anne on her knees beside him saying, in that sharp gasp of her sorrow, "You don't love me." This was no such thing, yet, in some phase, was life going to repeat itself over and over in the endless earth journeys he might have to make, futilities of mismated minds, the outcry of defrauded souls? But at least this wasn't his cowardly silence on the heel of Anne's gasping cry. He could be honest here, for this was Nan. "My darling," he said, "you're nearer to me than anything in this world--or out of it. Don't you make any mistake about that. And if I don't want things 'like fury,' as you say, it's a matter of the calendar, that's all. Dick wants them like fury. So do you. I'm an old chap, dear. You can't set back the clock." But he had pushed her away, as his aloofness had pushed Anne. He had thrown Anne back upon her humiliated self. He had tossed Nan forward into Dick's generation and hers. But here was the difference. She wasn't going to cry out, "You don't love me." Instead, she turned to him, shivering a little and drawing her scarf about her shoulders. "We'd better go down," she said. "It's getting cold. Dick'll be wondering." They got up and Raven set the chairs inside the hut and took his glance about to see if all was in order: for he did not abandon the unwilling hope that Tira might sometime come. As they went down the hill the talk turned to the hylas and the spring, but when they reached the house Nan did not go in to Dick. She went to her own room and lay down on her bed and thought passionately of leaving Rookie free. How was it possible? Could he be free while she was bound? Sometimes of late she had been so tired that she could conceive of no refuge but wild and reckless outcry. And what could he think she meant when she said: "I wished you wanted me"? XLI