"I don't mean," she said, "to make you feel bad. I hadn't ought to put it on anybody else's shoulders, anyway."
Then Raven realized that the tenderness in her voice was for him. He turned and came back to his place by the fire. But he did not sit. He stood looking at her as she looked anxiously up at him.
"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said, "for the present, anyway. I'm going now, and you're to stay here as long as you think best. When you go, lock the door and put the key under the flat stone out by the step. I often leave the key there. I'll make sure the stone isn't frozen down. Now, you understand, don't you? You're to come up here whenever you like. If there isn't a fire, you're to build one. Nobody will disturb you. Jerry won't be cutting up here. I'll send him down into the lower woods."
"But," she said, in evident concern, "I can't do that. You come up here to write your books. Mr. Tenney said so, when he was tellin' me who all the neighbors were. He said you had the shack repaired so's to write your books."
Raven smiled. Books seemed far removed from this naked face of life.
"I'm not writing books now," he said. "I'm just hanging round. I may go over and see your husband, ask him to do some work for me."
The quick look of alarm ran into her face.
"No," he answered steadily, "I won't say a word about you. Of course I sha'n't. And I won't to anybody."
"An'," she broke in tumultuously, "if you should see me--oh, it's an awful thing to say, after what you've done for me this day--but you won't act as if you ever see me before?"
That was the only wisdom, Raven saw, but a band seemed to tighten about his heart. Deny her before men, she whom he had not yet untangled from the rapt vision of their meeting?
"No," he said, "I won't even look at you. Now I'm going. I'll loosen up the stone."
She rose to her imposing height and came to him where he stood, his hand on the latch. Her eyes brimmed. In the one glance he had of her, he thought such extremity of gratitude might, in another instant, break in a flood of words.
"Go back," he said, "where nobody can see you when I open the door. Jerry may have taken a notion to come up."
She turned obediently and he did not look at her again. He opened the door and stepped out. The stone was there beside the larger one below the sill. He bent and wrenched it up from the ground where the frost was holding it, and with such unregarding force that the edges hurt his hands. He smiled a little at the savage satisfaction of the act, wondering if this was how Tenney felt when he smashed away at the wood. Then he remembered that the key was inside, tapped on the door, opened it and spoke to her: