And what of Tira? Was she resolved into the earth that made her? Or would she also help? He wondered why she had died. Was it because she had been unable to face the idea of the little boy who was not right taking his maimed innocence into some other state alone? No. Tira had her starkly simple faith. She had her Lord Jesus Christ. She would, as simply as she believed, have trusted the child to Him. Did she so fear to face her life with Tenney--the hurtling, blind, elemental creature with blood on his hands--that she took herself away? No. Tira was no such person. There was a wild, high courage in her that, the more terrible the challenge, responded the more valiantly. Why did she take herself away? And what was she in these walls that had been dedicated to her safety? Was she existent, like Old Crow? Was she here with Raven when his mind clamored for peace? Did she, too, answer "Yes, yes!" She had, he concluded, gone. It seemed as if she had withdrawn herself, by her own will, for some inexorable reason. He remembered threnodies that saw the beloved dead absorbed into the course of nature: the dawn, the sunset, the season's round, the flowers that spring ever renewed to deck the laureate hearse. And as his mind sought her in the night breeze that came in to fan him and Tenney alike, in the sky where the stars, through arboreal spaces, never looked so piercingly bright, he did seem to be aware of an actual intelligence. But it was assuredly not Tira and it was not Old Crow. It was Anne. Whether his mind had been so occupied by these other more immediate things that she could not get the connection between her will and his, whether she now found him, bereft of Tira, free to do her unchanged bidding, he could not see. But Anne was there. At least, the knowledge of her was in his mind, insisting on being heard, and insisting as it never had in this present life. For whereas then her attack had been subtly organized, Anne herself, the directing general, behind almost invisible potencies of suggestion and finesse, now here she was in the open, plainly commanding him, as if this might be the only fight she should be able to manage, and it must be to the finish. And what she wanted was plain obedience touching the disposal of her trust. It was not his love she was asking for now. That, he concluded, though without bitterness, might not look desirable to her any more. Or perhaps she had learned how futile it was to ask it. Or, indeed, was all love futile beyond the grave? No, for he loved Tira withdrawn into her impenetrable seclusion--but that he must not think of. The fight was on, the conclusive fight with Anne. And he seemed to be battling for the integrity of his own soul, the freedom of his will. He sat up on his couch, and heard himself say aloud: "No. I won't do it. You can't make me."