The last he had to add. She was, his defensive inner mind told him, all wrong in flying out of the house "like a crazed creatur'" when she might have stayed and told him, just told him, whether she was the kind of woman he, at these unheralded mad moments, thought she was. That was the undercurrent always in his mind: if she wouldn't be so still and hateful, if she would only tell him. She might have some pity on a man, that defensive inner mind advised him, when she saw him all worked up. But the minute he warned her the devil of doubt was again tempting him, she began to freeze up and wouldn't speak to him at all. No wonder, with that devil inside whispering to him and hounding him on--no wonder he said things and--he trembled here and dared not follow out that thought--and was afraid he might do things. But she shook her head, at his offer of taking the child. "You might go an' cut a slice o' ham," she said wearily. "It's 'most dinner time. We might's well have that as anything." But the baby reached out and closed his little fingers about Tenney's thumb. Tenney stood there, his heart swelling within him at the contrast between the child's forgivingness and her cruelty. Now she had the child's outer things off, and she rose with them in one hand, carrying the child on the other arm, and it was her movement that dragged the little fingers away and broke that significant clasp on Tenney's thumb. How hateful she could be, he thought, his heart swelling more and more. He stood where she left him, and she went to the low couch and set the baby down there, and put into his hand a formless doll she wanted him to love. He never really noticed it, but she felt he would sometime love the doll. Then she glanced, with the air of being recalled to a wearisome routine, at the table in the middle of the floor; it meant ham and eggs. It seemed also to occur to her that she had not taken off her cloak, and she hung it on its nail behind the door. Soon, as Tenney, still motionless there by the stove, seemed mutely accusing her, mutely imploring her not to be cruel, she did turn and look at him. The thought of Raven was uppermost in her mind. It had been there every minute since she had gone into his house in the woods, but now it roused compellingly, stronger than even her present apprehension. Most of all, she was penetrated by a wonder almost greater than any emotion she had ever felt, at having laid before him at once and without persuasion, the story of her life. Why should she have told him? She would have said no decent woman could betray her husband to another man. It was entirely mysterious, and she gave it up. But there was, behind the wonder, a dazzling sense that he was different. As he had told her that strange thing she hardly dared think of now, because it seemed as if she must have misunderstood him--the thing about her looking so good and wonderful when he came upon her--so he, in his kindness and compassion,