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Updated: May 11, 2025
Raven swerved on his path, and affected to be looking down the road. He could not proceed the way he was going. Tenney's mind must not be drawn toward that living focus by even the most fragmentary hint. Yet if Tira was still there, she and the child must be fed. After his glance down the road he turned back to the house, nodding at Tenney as he neared. But Tenney motioned to him.
And while they worked on the tenant-less body, the Donnyhill boy, a giant with a gentle face, said he could drive, and was sent with Raven's car to the farmer who had a telephone, and the doctor came and Nan heard herself explaining to him that she woke up worried over Tira, because Tira had spoken of the stepping stones. The doctor shook his head over it all.
Tira gave a start so violent that the blue scarf fell from her shoulders and one end of it lay over Nan's arm. She did get up. She rose slowly and stood there looking straight before her, eyes wide and dark, her hands clasped. Her stiff lips moved. She did piteously, Raven saw, try to speak. But she could not manage it and after the long moment she sank back into her seat.
If Tira knew the power of her own beauty, how terribly decisive a moment this would be in the great dark kitchen Nan had just left! And yet if Tira, having looked in her mirror and the mirror of life, were cruelly sophisticated enough to play that part, the man would be given odds to resist her. He was no ingenuous youth. Raven walked up to the side door of the house and knocked.
He went to bed with a hopeful presentiment that, if things kept on like this, he might take Raven back to town presently, reasonable enough to place himself voluntarily in the right hands. To Tira, the week dragged on with a malicious implication of never meaning to end until it ended her. Strange things could be done in a week, it reminded her, conclusive, sinister things.
Nan, waiting, her eyes on them, still halted until they drove out, and nodded her good morning. Tenney drew up. His sharp eyes signaled her. "I've got it in mind," he announced, "to have a prayer-meetin', come Wednesday. I'm goin' to put up a notice in the post-office." He turned a reminding look on Tira who responded by what seemed to Nan an unwilling confirmation: "You're invited to come."
She was a stranger in Hartford, and beyond that city she dared not send her thoughts. Could Tira get a place for her? She feared not, for Tira herself seldom went to the city. But there was Doctor Bugbee, who knew a great many people there, and who was so rich and powerful, that even in Hartford, though it was a city, his word must have great influence.
She smiled dimly, and Nan said: "Yes. But I shall come over to the Donnyhills' to-morrow." "Yes," said Tira, "so do. Now I'd better go." They got up and Nan put her hands on Tira's shoulders and one hand was numb from that iron clasp and stood looking at her. Nan was not a kissing woman, but she considered whether she should kiss her, to show she loved her. She thought not.
Now, Dickie, you put away your man-of-the-world attitude toward battle, murder, and sudden death, and you let me tell you a few things about Tenney." He began with the day when he had found Tira in the woods. He touched on the facts briefly, omitting to confess what the woman looked to his dazzled eyes. It was a drawing austerely black and white.
"At the last minute, if you please, when I was taking the train. There she was behind me. Did he send for her?" "I rather think so," said Raven, giving Dick every possible advantage. Then, rallied by her smiling eyes, "Well, yes, of course he did. Don't look at me like that. I have to turn myself inside out, you she-tyrant!" "Does Dick know?" she hastened to ask. "About Tira?" "Yes."
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