"I haven't had time to wish you hadn't come," he said. He had to be straight with her. "I never was more surprised in my life. You were the last person I expected to see." "But why d'you laugh, Rookie?" she persisted, and then, as he hesitated, evidently considering exactly why he did and what form he could put it in, she concluded: "I know. You were taken aback. I've done the same thing myself, often. Well!" She seemed to dismiss it as unimportant and began where she had evidently meant to begin. "Now I'll tell you what I'm here for." "Sit down, Nan," he bade her. Now that his first derangement was over, he was glad to see her. Tira might not come. If she did, he could do something. He could even, at a pinch and with Tira's consent, put the knowledge of the tawdry business into Nan's hands. But she would not sit down. Plainly she had received a setback. She was refusing to accept his hospitality to any informal extent. And he saw he had hurt her. He was always reading the inner minds of people, and that was where his disastrous sympathy was forever leading him: to that pernicious yielding, that living of other people's lives and not his own. "It was only," he said, trying to pick up the lost thread of her confidence, "that I didn't expect you. I couldn't have dreamed of your coming. How did you come so early?" "Took the early train," said Nan curtly. "Not the beastly old thing that starts before light?" She nodded. "What for?" "To get ahead of them," she answered, still curtly. "Them? Who?" "Dick and his mother and Doctor Brooke." "Dick and Amelia? What's Amelia on here for?" He had half expected her and yet, in the new turmoil about him, he had actually forgotten she might come. "Because Dick sent her your letter. They both assume you've broken down, and she's called in an alienist to come up here and eye you over, and Dick's pretty sick over the whole business; so he's coming along, too. He was prepared for mother, I fancy, but not the alienist." "But what's it all for?" "Why, you know, Rookie. You've broken down." Raven stared at her. Then he laughed. "Well," he said, "let 'em come. Charlotte'll give 'em some dinner and they can look at the mountain and go back on the six to-night." "That's precisely what they won't do," said Nan, her lips tightening. "At least your sister. She's going to stay." "The deuce she is," said Raven. "What for?" Then Nan did break out of the stiffness that seemed to have held her like an armor since the momentary setback of her coming. Her own laugh ran over her face and creased it into delighted merriment. "Why, don't you see?" she asked him. "To brighten your life." Raven's eyes met hers with a rueful terror. He reached, at a leap, the motive for her coming. "And you rushed off up here to tell me," he said. "Dear Nan! Good child! But you don't mean they're actually coming to-day?"