CHAPTER XVII

CONCERNING MARRIAGE

And it was spring-time; these prisoners of frost were beautifully

sensitive. They, too, with the lake and the aspens and the earth, the

seeds and the beasts, had suffered the season of interment. In such

fashion Nature makes possible the fresh undertakings of last summer's

reckless prodigals; she drives them into her mock tomb and freezes

their hearts--it is a little rest of death--so that they wake like

turbulent bacchantes drunk with sleep and with forgetfulness. Love,

spring says, is an eternal fact, welcome its new manifestations.

Remating bluebirds built their nests near Joan's window; they were not

troubled by sad recollections of last year's nests nor the young birds

that flew away. It was another life, a resurrection. If they remembered

at all, they remembered only the impulses of pleasure; they had

somewhere before learned how to love, how to build; the past summers

had given practice to their singing little throats and to their rapid

wings. No ghosts forbade happiness and no God--man-voiced--saying,

because he knew the ugly human aftermaths, hard sayings of "Be ye

perfect."

What counsel was theirs for Joan and what had her human mentor taught

her? He had taught her in one form or another the beauty of passion and

its eternal sinlessness, for that was his sincere belief. By music he

had taught her, by musical speech, by the preaching of heathen sage and

the wit of modern arguers. He had given her all the moral schooling she

had ever had and its golden rule was, "Be ye beautiful and generous."

Joan was both beautiful and made for giving, "free-hearted" as she

might herself have said, Friday's child as the old rhyme has it,--and

to cry out to her with love, saying, "I want you, Joan," was just,

sooner or later, to see her turn and bend her head and hold out her

arms. Prosper had the reward of patience; his wild leopardess was tamed

to his hand and her sweetness made him tender and very merciful.

Their gay, little house stood open all day while they explored the

mountains and plunged into the lake, choosing the hot hour of noon.

Joan made herself mistress of the house and did her woman's work at

last of tidying and beautifying and decking corners with gorgeous

branches of blossoms while Prosper worked at his desk. He was happy;

the reality of Joan's presence had laid his ghost just as the reality

of his had laid hers. His work went on magically and added the glow of

successful creation to the glow of satisfied desire. And his sin of

deceit troubled him very little, for he had worked out that problem

and had decided that Pierre, dead or alive, was unworthy of this mate.

But sometimes in her sleep Joan would start and moan feeling the touch

of the white-hot iron on her shoulder. Her hatred of Pierre's cruelty,

her resolution to be done with him forever, must have vividly renewed

itself in those dreams, for she would cling to Prosper like a

frightened child, and wake, trembling, happy to find herself safe in

his arms.

So they lived their spring. Wen Ho, the silent and inscrutable, went

out of the valley for provisions, and during his absence Joan queened

it in the kitchen. She was learning to laugh, to see the absurd,

delightful twists of daily living, to mock Prosper's oddities as he

mocked hers. She was learning to be a comrade and she was learning

better speech and more exquisite ways. It was inevitable that she

should learn. Prosper, in these days, spent his whole soul upon her,

fed her with music and delight, and he trained her to sing her sagas so

that every day her voice gained in power and flexible sweetness. She

would sing, since he told her to, her voice beating its wings against

the walls of the house or ringing down the canyon in untrammeled

flight. Prosper was lost in wonder of her, in a passionate admiration

for his own handiwork. He was making, here in this God-forsaken

solitude, a thing of marvel; what he was making surely justified the

means. Joan's laughable simplicity and directness were the same; they

were part of her essence; no civilizing could confuse or disturb them;

but she changed, her brain grew, it absorbed material, it attempted

adventures. Nowadays Joan sometimes argued, and this filled Prosper

with delight, so quaint and logical she was and so skillful.

They were reading out under the firs by the green lip of the lake,

when Wen Ho led his pack-horse up the trail. He had been gone a month,

for Prosper had sent him out of the valley to a distant town for his

supplies. He didn't want the little frontier place to prick up its

ears. Wen Ho had ridden by a secret trail back over the range; he had

not passed even the ranger station on his way. He called out, and, in

the midst of a sentence Joan was reading, Prosper started up.

Joan looked at him smiling. "You're as easily turned away from

learning as a boy," she began, and faltered when she saw his face. It

was turned eagerly toward the climbing horses, toward the pack, and it

was sharp and keen with detached interest, an excitement that had

nothing, nothing in the world to do with her.

It was the great bundle of Prosper's mail that first brought home to

Joan the awareness of an outside world. She knew that Prosper was a

traveled and widely experienced man, but she had not fancied him held

to this world by human attachments. Concerning the "tall child" she

had not put a question and she still believed her to have been

Prosper's wife. But when, leaving her place under the tree, she came

into the house and found Prosper feverishly slitting open envelope

after envelope, with a pile of papers and magazines, ankle-high,

beside him on the floor, she stood aghast.

"What a lot of people must have been writing to you, Prosper!"

He did not hear her. He was greedy of eye and fingertips, searching

written sheet after sheet. He was flushed along the cheek-bones and a

little pale about the lips. Joan stood there, her hands hanging, her

head bent, staring up and out at him from under her brows. She looked,

in this attitude, rather dangerous.

Prosper sped through his mail, made an odd gesture of desperation, sat

still a moment staring, his brilliant, green-gray eyes gone dull and

blank, then he gave himself a shuddery shake, pulled a small parcel

from under the papers, and held it out to Joan. He smiled.

"Something for you, leopardess," he said--he had told her his first

impression of her.

She took the box haughtily and walked with it over to her chair. But

he came and kissed her.

"Jealous of my mail? You foolish child. What a girl-thing you are! It

doesn't matter, does it, how we train you or leave you untrained,

you're all alike, you women, under your skins. Open your box and thank

me prettily, and leave matters you don't understand alone. That's the

way to talk, isn't it?"

She flushed and smiled rather doubtfully, but, at sight of his gift,

she forgot everything else for a moment. It was a collar of topaz and

emerald set in heavy silver. She was awe-struck by its beauty, and

went, after he had fastened it for her, to stand a long while before

the glass looking at it. She wore her yellow dress cut into a V at the

neck and the jewels rested beautifully at the base of her long, round

throat, faintly brown like her face up to the brow. The yellow and the

green brought out all the value of her grave, scarlet lips, the soft,

even tints of her skin, the dark lights and shadows of her hair and

eyes.

"It's beautiful," she said. "It's wonderful. I love it."

All the time very grave and still, she took it off, put it on its box,

and laid it on the mantel. Then she went out of doors.

Prosper hurried to the window and saw her walk out to the garden they

had made and begin her work. He was puzzled by her manner, but

presently shrugged the problem of her mood away and went back to his

mail. That night he finished his novel and got it ready for the

publisher.

Again Wen Ho, calm and uncomplaining, was sent out over the hill, and

again the idyll was renewed, and Joan wore the collar and was almost

as happy as before. Only one night she startled Prosper.

"I asked Pierre," she said slowly, after a silence, in her low-pitched

voice, "when he was taking me away home, I asked, 'Where are you

going?' and he said to me, 'Don't you savvy the answer to that

question, Joan?' And, Prosper, I didn't savvy, so he told me and he

looked at me sort of hard and stern, 'We're a-goin' to be married,

Joan.'"

Prosper and Joan were sitting before the fire, Joan on the bearskin at

his feet, he lounging back, long-legged, smoke-veiled, in one of the

lacquered chairs. She had been fingering her collar and she kept on

fingering it as she spoke and staring straight into the flames, but,

at the last, quoting Pierre's words and tone, her voice and face

quivered and she looked at him with eyes of mysterious pain, in them a

sort of uncomprehended anguish.

"Why was that, Prosper?" she asked; "I mean, why did he say it that

way? And what--what does it stand for, marrying or not--?"

Prosper jerked a little in his chair, then said he blasphemously,

"Marriage is the sin against the Holy Ghost. Don't be the conventional

woman, Joan. Isn't this beautiful, this life of ours?"

"Yes." But her eyes of uncomprehended pain were still upon him. So he

put his hand over them and drew her head against his knee. "Yes, but

that other life was--was--before Pierre changed, it was beautiful--"

"Of course. Love is always beautiful. Not even marriage can always

spoil it, though it very often does. Well, Joan," he went on

flippantly, though the tickle of her lashes against his palm somehow

disturbed his flippancy, "I'll go into the subject with you one of

these days, when the weather isn't so beautiful. It's really a matter

of law, property rights, and so forth; a practice variously conducted

in various lands; it's man's most studied insult to woman; it's

recommended as the lesser of two evils by a man who despised woman as

only an Oriental can despise her, Saint Paul by name; it's a thing

civilized women cry for till they get it and then quite bitterly learn

to understand; it's a horrible invention which needn't touch your

beautiful clean soul, dear. Come out and look at the moon."

"Listen!" They stood side by side at the door. "Some silly bird thinks

that is the dawn. Look at me, Joan!"

She lifted obedient eyes.

"There! That's better. Don't get that other look. I can't bear it. I

love you."

A moment later they went out into the sweet, silver silence down to

the silver lake.

* * * * *

Four months later the name of Prosper Gael began to be on every one's

lips, and before every one's eyes; the world, his world, began to

clamor for him. Even Wen Ho grumbled at this going out on tremendous

journeys after the mail for which Prosper grew more and more greedy and

impatient. His novel, "The Canyon," had been accepted, was enormously

advertised, had made an extraordinary success. All this he explained to

Joan, who tried to rejoice because she saw that it was exquisite

delight to Prosper. He was by way of thinking now that his exile, his

Wyoming adventure, was to thank for his success, but when a woman, even

such a woman as Joan, begins to feel that she has been a useful

emotional experience, there begins pain. For Joan pain began and daily

it increased. It was suffering for her to watch Prosper reading his

letters, forwarded to him from the Western town where his friends and

his secretary believed him to be recovering from some nervous illness;

to watch him smoking and thinking of himself, his fame, his talents,

his future; to watch him scribbling notes, planning another work, to

hear his excited talk, now so impersonal, so unrelated to her; to see

how his eagerness over her education slackened, faltered, died; to

notice that he no longer watched the changeful humors of her beauty nor

cared if she wore bronze or blue or yellow; and worst of all, to find

him staring at her sometimes with a worried, impatient look which

scuttled out of sight like some ugly, many-legged creature when it met

her own eyes--painful, of course, yet such an old story. Joan, who had

never heard of such experience, did not foresee the inevitable end,

and, in so much, she was spared. The extra pain of forfeiting her

dignity and self-respect did not touch her, for she made none of those

most pitiful, unavailing efforts to hold him, to cling; did not even

pretend indifference. She only drew gradually into herself, shrinking

from her pain and from him as the cause of it; she only lost her glow

of love-happiness, her face seemed dwindled, seemed to contract, and

that secret look of a wild animal returned to her gray eyes. She

quietly gave up the old regulations of their life; she did not remind

him of the study-hours, the music-hours, the hours of wild outdoor

play. She read under the firs, alone; she studied faithfully, alone;

she climbed and swam, alone--or with his absent-minded, fitful company;

she worked in her garden, alone. At night, when he was asleep, she lay

with her hand pressed against her heart, staring at the darkness,

listening to the night, waiting. Curiously enough, his inevitable

returns of passion and interest, the always decreasing flood-mark, each

time a line lower, did not deceive her, did not distract her. She never

expressed her trouble, even to herself. She did not give it any words.

She took her pain without wincing, without complaint, and when he

seemed to need her in any little way, in any big way, she gave because

she could not help it, because she had promised him largesse, because

it was her nature to give. Besides, although she was instinctively

waiting, she did not foresee the end.

It was in late October when, somewhere in the pile of Prosper's mail,

there lay a small gray envelope. Joan drew his attention to it,

calling it a "queer little letter," and he took it up slowly as though

his deft and nervous fingers had gone numb. Before he opened it he

looked at Joan and, in one sense, it was the last time he ever did

look at her; for at that moment his stark spirit looked straight into

hers, acknowledged its guilt, and bade her a mute and remorseful

farewell.

He read and Joan watched. His face grew pale and bright as though some

electric current had been turned into his veins; his eyes, looking up

from the writing, but not returning to her, had the look given by some

drug which is meant to stupefy, but which taken in an overdose

intoxicates. He turned and made for the door, holding the little gray

folded paper in his hand. On the threshold he half-faced her without

lifting his eyes.

"I have had extraordinary news, Joan. I shall have to go off alone and

think things out. I don't know when I shall get back." He went out and

shut the door gently.

Joan stood listening. She heard him go along the passage and through

the second door. She heard his feet on the mountain trail. Afterwards

she went out and stood between the two sentinel firs that had marked

the entrance to that snow-tunnel long since disappeared. Now it was a

late October day, bright as a bared sword. The flowers of the Indian

paint-brush burned like red candle flames everywhere under the firs,

the fire-weed blazed, the aspen leaves were laid like little golden

tiles against the metallic blue of the sky. The high peak pointed up

dizzily and down, down dizzily into the clear emptiness of the lake.

This great peak stood there in the glittering stillness of the day. A

grouse boomed, but Joan was not startled by the sudden rush of its

wings. She felt the sharp weight of that silent mountain in her heart;

she might have been buried under it. So she felt it all day while she

worked, a desperate, bright day,--hideous in her memory,--and at night

she lay waiting. After hours longer than any other hours, the door of

her bedroom opened and an oblong of moonlight, as white as paper, fell

across the matted floor. Prosper stepped in noiselessly and walked

over to her bed. He stood a moment and she heard him swallow.

"You're awake, Joan?"

Her eyes were staring up at him, but she lay still.

"Listen, Joan." He spoke in short sentences, waiting between each for

some comment of hers which did not come. "I shall have to go away

to-morrow. I shall have to go away for some time. I don't want you to

be unhappy. I want you to stay here for a while if you will, for as

long as you want to stay. I am leaving you plenty of money. I will

write and explain it all very clearly to you. I know that you will

understand. Listen." Here he knelt and took her hands, which he found

lying cold and stiff under the cover, pressed against her heart. "I

have made you happy here in this little house, haven't I, Joan?"

She would not answer even this except by the merest flicker of her

eyelids.

"You have trusted me; now, trust me a little longer. My life is very

complicated. This beautiful year with you, the year you have given to

me, is just a temporary respite from--from all sorts of things. I've

taught you a great deal, Joan. I've healed the wound that brute made

on your shoulder and in your heart. I've taught you to be beautiful.

I've filled your mind with beauty. You are a wonderful woman. You'll

live to be grateful to me. Some day you'll tell me so."

Her quiet, curved lips moved. "Are you tellin' me good-bye, Prosper?"

It was impossible to lie to her. He bent his head.

"Yes, Joan."

"Then tell it quick and go out and leave me here to-night."

It was impossible to touch her. She might have been wrapped in white

fire. He found that though she had not stirred a finger, his hand had

shrunk away from hers. He got to his feet, all the cleverness which all

day long he had been weaving like a silk net to catch, to bewilder, to

draw away her brain from the anguish of full comprehension, was

shriveled. He stood and stared helplessly at her, dumb as a youth. And,

obedient, he went out and shut the door, taking the white patch of

moonlight with him.

So Joan, having waited, behind an obstinately locked door, for his

departure, came out at noon and found herself in the small, gay house

alone.

She sat in one of the lacquered chairs and saw after a long while that

the Chinaman was looking at her.

Wen Ho, it seemed, had been given instructions. He was to stay and

take care of the house and the lady for as long as she wanted it, or

him. Afterwards he was to lock up the house and go. He handed her a

large and bulky envelope which Joan took and let lie in her lap.

"You can go to-morrow, Wen Ho," she said.

"You no wait for Mr. Gael come back? He say he come back."

"No. I'm not going to wait. I guess"--here Joan twisted her mouth into

a smile--"I'm not one of the waiting kind. I'm a-going back to my own

ranch now. It won't seem so awful lonesome, perhaps, as I was thinking

last spring that it would."

She touched the envelope without looking at it.

"Is this money, Wen Ho?"

"I tink so, lady."

She held it, unopened, out to him.

"I will give it to you, then. I have no need of it."

She stood up.

"I am going out now to climb up this mountain back of the house so's I

can see just where I am. I'll come down to-night for dinner and

to-morrow after breakfast I'll be going away. You understand?"

"Lady, you mean give me all this money?" babbled the Chinaman.

"Yes," said Joan gravely; "I have no need of it."

She went past him with her swinging step.

She was coming down the mountain-side that evening, very tired, but

with the curious, peaceful stillness of heart that comes with an

entire acceptance of fate, when she heard the sound of horses' hoofs

in the hollow of the canyon. Her heart began to beat to suffocation.

She ran to where, standing near a big fir tree, she could look

straight down on the trail leading up to Prosper's cabin. Presently

the horsemen came in sight--the one that rode first was tall and broad

and fair, she could see under his hat-brim his straight nose and

firmly modeled chin.

"The sin-buster!" said Joan; then, looking at the other, who rode

behind him, she caught at the tree with crooked hands and began to

sink slowly to her knees. He was tall and slight, he rode with

inimitable grace. As she stared, he took off his sombrero, rested his

hand on the saddle-horn, and looked haggardly, eagerly, up the trail

toward the house. His face was whiter, thinner, worn by protracted

mental pain, but it was the beautiful, living face of Pierre.

Joan shrank back into the shadows of the pines, crouched for a few

minutes like a mortally wounded beast, then ran up the mountain-side

as though the fire that had once touched her shoulder had eaten its

way at last into her heart.

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Book Two

THE ESTRAY

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BOOK TWO: The Estray

CHAPTER I

A WILD CAT

The Lazy-Y ranch-house, a one-storied building of logs, was built

about three sides of a paved court. In the middle of this court stood

a well with a high rustic top, and about this well on a certain

brilliant July night, a tall man was strolling with his hands behind

his back. It was a night of full moon, sailing high, which poured

whiteness into the court, making its cobbles embedded in the earth

look like milky bubbles and drawing clear-cut shadows of the well-top

and the gables and chimneys of the house. The man slowly circled the

court beginning close to the walls and narrowing till he made a loop

about the well, and then, reversing, worked in widening orbits as far

as the walls again. His wife, looking out at him through one of the

windows, thought that, in the moonlight, followed by his own squat,

active shadow, he looked like a huge spider weaving a web. This effect

was heightened by the fact that he never looked up. He was deep in

some plan to which it was impossible for her not to believe that the

curious pattern of his walk bore some relation.

From the northern wing of the ranch-house, strongly lighted, came a

tumult of sound; music, thumping feet, a man's voice chanting

couplets:

"Oh, you walk right through and you turn around

and swing the girl that finds you,

And you come right back by the same old track

and turn the girl behind you."

Some one was directing a quadrille in native fashion. There was much

laughter, confusion, and applause. None of this noise disturbed the

man. He did not look at the lighted windows. He might really have been

a gigantic insect entirely unrelated to the human creatures so noisily

near at hand.

A man came round the corner of the house, crossed the square, and,

lurching a little, made for the door of the lighted wing. Shortly

after his entrance the sound of music and dancing abruptly stopped.

This stillness gave the spider pause, but he was about to renew his

weaving, when, in the silence, a woman spoke.

"You, Mabel, don't you go home," she said.

She had not spoken loudly, but her voice beat against the walls of the

court as though it could have filled the whole moonlight night with

dangerous beauty. The listener outside lifted his head with a low,

startled exclamation. Suddenly the world was alive with adventure and

alarm.

"Mind your own business, you wild cat," answered a man's raucous

voice. "She's my wife, which is somethin' that your sort knows nothin'

about. Come on, you Mabel. You think that outlaw can keep me from

takin' home my wife, you're betting wrong."

Another silence; then the voice again, a little louder, as though the

speaker had stepped out into the center of the room.

"Mabel is not a-goin' home with you," it said; and the listener

outside threw back his head with the gesture of a man sensitive to

music who listens to some ecstatic melody. "She happens to be stoppin'

here with us to-night. You say that she's your wife, but that don't

mean that she belongs to you, body and soul, Bill Greer--not to you,

who don't possess your own body, or soul. Why, you can't keep your

feet steady, you can't pull your hand away from mine. You can't hold

your tipsy eyes on mine. Do you call that ownin' your own body? And as

fer your soul, it's a hell of rage and dirty feelin's that I'd hate to

burn my eyes by lookin' closely at."

A deep, short, alarming chorus of laughter interrupted the speech. The

speaker evidently had her audience.

"So you don't own anything to-night," went on the extraordinary,

deliberate voice; "surely you don't own Mabel. You can't get a claim

on her, not thataway. She's her own. She belongs to her own self. When

you're fit to take her, why, then come and tell us about it, and if we

judge you're a-tellin' us the truth, mebbe we'll let her go. Till

then--" a pause which was filled with a rapid shuffling of feet. The

door flew open and in its lighted oblong the observer saw a huddled

figure behind which rose a woman's black and shapely head. "Till

then," repeated the deep-toned, ringing voice, "_get out_!" And the

huddled man came on a staggering run which ended in a backward fall on

the cobbles of the court.

The man who watched trod lightly past him and came to the open door.

Inside, firelight beat on the golden log walls and salmon-colored

timber ceiling; a lamp hanging from a beam threw down a strong,

conflicting arc of white light. A dozen brown-faced, booted young men

stood about, three musicians were ready to take up their interrupted

music, the little fat man who had called out the figures of the

quadrille, stood on a barrel, his arms folded across his paunch. A

fair-haired girl, her face marred by recent tears, drooped near him.

Two of the young men were murmuring reassurances to her; others

surrounded a stout, red-faced girl who was laughing and talking

loudly. The Jew's eyes wandered till they came to the fireplace. There

another woman leaned against the wall.

The music struck up, the dancing began again, the two other girls,

quickly provided with partners, began to waltz, the superfluous men

stood up together and went at it with gravity and grace. No one asked

this woman, who stood at ease, watching the dancers, her hands resting

on her hips, her head tilted back against the logs. As he looked at

her, the intruder had a queer little thrill of fright. He remembered

something he had once seen--a tame panther which was to be used in

some moving-picture play. Its confident owner had led it in on a chain

and held it negligently in a corner of the room, waiting for his cue.

The panther had stood there drowsily, its eyes shifting a little,

then, watching people, its inky head had begun to move from side to

side. He remembered the way the loose chain jerked. The animal's eyes

half-closed, it lowered its head, its upper lip began to draw away

from its teeth. All at once it had dropped on its belly. Some one

cried out, "Hold your beast!"

This young woman by the fireplace had just that panther-air of

perilous quietness. She was very haggard, very thin; she wore her

massive, black hair drawn away hideously from brow and temple, and out

of this lean, unshaded face a pair of deep eyes looked drowsily,

dangerously. Her mouth was straightened into an expression of proud

bitterness, her round chin thrust forward; there was a deep, scowling

line that rose from the bridge of her straight, short nose almost to

the roots of her hair. It cut across a splendidly modeled brow. She

was very graceful, if such a bundle of bones might be said to have any

grace. Her pose was arresting. There was a tragic force and attraction

about her.

The man by the door appraised her carefully between his narrowed lids.

He kept in mind the remembered melody of her voice, and, after a few

moments, he strolled across the floor and came up to her.

"Will you dance?" he said.

He had a very charming and subtle smile, a very charming and

sympathetic look. The woman was startled, color rose into her face.

She stared at him.

"I'm not dancing, Mr. Morena," she answered.

"You know my name," smiled Morena; "and I don't know yours. I've been

on Mr. Yarnall's ranch for a month. Why haven't I seen you?"

"Fer not lookin', I suppose." She had given him that one startled

glance, and now she had turned her eyes back to the dancers and wore a

grim, contemptuous air. Her speeches, though they were cut into short,

crisp words, were full of music of a sharp, metallic quality different

from the tone of her other speech, but quite as beautifully expressive.

"May I smoke?" asked Morena. He was still smiling his charming smile

and watching her out of the corners of his eyes.

"I'm not hinderin' you any," said she.

Morena smiled deeper. He took some time making and lighting his

cigarette.

"You don't smoke, yourself?" he asked.

"No."

"Nor dance?"

"No."

"Nor behave prettily to polite young men?"

Again the woman looked at him. "You ain't so awful young, are you?"

He laughed aloud.

"I amuse you, don't I? Well, I'm not always so all-fired funny,"

drawled the creature, lowering her head a little.

"No. I've heard that you're not. You rather run things here, I gather;

got the boys 'plumb-scared'?"

"Did Mr. Yarnall tell you that?"

"Yes. I've just in the last few minutes remembered who you are. You're

Jane. You cook for the 'outfit,' and Yarnall was telling us the other

night how he sent one of the boys out for a cook, the last one, a man,

having been beaten up, and how the boy had brought you back behind him

on his saddle. He said you'd kept order for him ever since, were

better than a foreman. Who was the man you threw out to-night?"

"Perhaps," drawled Jane, "he was just a feller who asked too many

questions?"

Again Morena's smile deepened into his cheeks. He gave way, in the

Jewish fashion so deceptively suggestive of meekness and timidity,

when it is, at its worst, merely pliable insolence, at its best,

pliable determination. "You must pardon me, Miss Jane," he said in his

murmuring, cultivated voice. "You see I've had a great misfortune.

I've never been in your West. I've lived in New York where good

manners haven't time or space to flourish. I hadn't the least

intention of being impertinent. Do you want me to go?"

He moved as if to leave her, and she did not lift a finger to detain

him.

"I'm not carin'. Do as you please," she said with entire indifference.

"Oh," said Morena, looking back at her, "I don't stay where people are

'not carin'.'"

She gave him an extraordinarily intelligent look. "I should say that's

the only place you'd be wantin' to stay in at all--where you're not

exactly urged to come," she said.

Morena flushed and his lids flickered. He was for an instant absurdly

inclined to anger and made two or three steps away. But he came back.

He bowed and spoke as he would have spoken to a great lady, suavely,

deferentially.

"Good-night. I wish I could think that you have enjoyed our talk as

greatly as I have, Miss Jane. I should very much like to be allowed to

repeat it. May I be stupidly personal and tell you that you are very

beautiful?" He bowed, gave her an upward look and went out, finding

his way cleverly among the dancers.

Outside, in the moonlit court, he stood, threw back his head and

laughed, not loudly but consumedly. He was remembering her white face

of mute astonishment. She looked almost as if his compliment had given

her sharp pain.

Morena went laughing to his room in the opposite wing. He wanted to

describe the interview to his wife.

CHAPTER II

MORENA'S WIFE

Betty Morena was sitting in a rustic chair before an open fire, smoking

a cigarette. She was a short woman, so slenderly, even narrowly built,

as to appear overgrown, and she was a mature woman so immaturely shaped

and featured as to appear hardly more than a child. Her curly, russet

hair was parted at the side, her wide, long-lashed eyes were set far

apart, her nose was really a finely modeled snub,--more, a boy's nose

even to a light sprinkling of freckles,--and her mouth was provokingly

the soft, red mouth of a sorrowful child. She lounged far down in her

chair, her slight legs, clad in riding-breeches of perfect cut,

stretched out straight, her limber arms along the arms of the chair,

her chin sunk on her flat chest, and her big, clear eyes staring into

the fire. It was an odd figure of a wife for Jasper Morena, a Jew of

thirty-eight, producer and manager of plays.

When Betty Kane had run away with him, there had been lamentation and

rage in the houses of Kane and of Morena. To the pride of an old

Hebrew family, the marriage even of this wandering son with a Gentile

was fully as degrading as to the pride of the old Tory family was the

marriage with a Jew. Her perverse Gaelic blood on fire with the

insults heaped upon her lover, Betty, seventeen years old, romantic,

clever, would have walked over flint to give her hand to him. That was

ten years ago. Now, when Jasper came into her room, she drew her quick

brows together, puffed at her cigarette, and blinked as though she was

looking at something distasteful and at the same time rather alarming.

"Have they stopped dancing, Jasper?" she asked in a voice that was at

once brusque and soft.

Jasper rubbed his hands delightedly. He was still merry, and came to

stand near the fire, looking down at her with eyes entirely kind and

admiring.

"Have you ever noticed Jane, who cooks for the outfit, Betty?"

"Yes. She's horrible."

"She's extraordinary, and I mean to get hold of her for Luck's play.

Did you read it?"

"Yes."

"The play is absolutely dependent on the leading part and I have found

it simply impossible to fill. Now, here's a woman of extraordinary

grace and beauty--"

Betty lifted skeptical eyebrows, twisted her limber mouth, but forbore

to contradict.

"And with a magical voice--a woman who not only looks the part, but is

it. You remember Luck's heroine?"

Betty flicked off the ash of her cigarette and looked away. "A savage,

isn't she? The man has her tamed, takes her back to London, and there

gives her cause for jealousy and she springs on him--yes, I remember.

This woman, Jane, is absolutely without education and hasn't a notion

of acting, I suppose."

Jasper rubbed his hands with increased delight. "Not a notion and she

murders the King's English. But she is Luck's savage and--in spite of

your eyebrows, Betty--she is beautiful. I can school her. It will take

money, no end of patience, but I can do it. It's one of the things I

can do. But, of course, there's the initial difficulty of persuading

her to try it."

"That oughtn't to be any difficulty at all. Of course she'll jump at

the chance."

"I'm not so sure. She was ready to throw me out of the kitchen

to-night. She is really a virago. Do you know what one of the men said

about her?" Jasper laughed and imitated the gentle Western drawl.

"Jane's plumb movin' to me. She's about halfway between 'You go to

hell' and 'You take me in your arms to rest.'"

Betty smiled. Her smile was vastly more mature than her appearance. It

was clever and cynical and cold. The Oriental, looking down at her,

lost his merriment.

"Do you feel better, dear?" he asked timidly. "Do you think you will

be able to go back next week?"

She stood up as he came nearer and walked over to the little table

that played the part of dressing-table under a wavy mirror. "Oh, yes.

I am quite well. I don't think the doctors have much sense. I'm sure I

hadn't anything like a nervous breakdown. I was just tired out."

Jasper drew back the hand whose touch she had eluded, and nervously,

his long supple fingers a little unsteady, lighted a cigarette. At

that moment he did not look like a spider, but like a lover who has

been hurt. Betty could see in the mirror a distorted image of his

dejected gracefulness, but, entirely unmoved, she put up her thin,

brown hands and began to take the pins out of her hair.

"I like your Jane experiment," she said. "Let me know how you get on

with it and whether I can help. I shall have to turn in now. I'm dead

beat. Yarnall took me halfway up the mountain and back. Good-night."

Jasper looked at her, then pressed his lips into a straight line and

went to the door which led from her bedroom to his. He said "Good-night"

in a low tone, glanced at her over his shoulder, and went out.

Betty waited an instant, then slowly unlaced her heavy, knee-high

boots, took them off, and began to walk to and fro on stocking feet,

hands clasped behind her back. With her curly hair all about her face

and shoulders, she looked like a wild, extravagantly naughty

school-girl, a girl in a wicked temper, a rebel against authority. In

fact, she was rejoicing that this horrible enforced visit to the West

was all but over. One week more! She was almost at an end of her

endurance. How she hated the beautiful white night outside, those

mountain peaks, the sound of that rapid river, the stillness of

sagebrush, the voice of the big pines! And she hated the log room, its

simplicity now all littered with incongruous luxuries; ivory toilet

articles on the board table; lacy, beribboned underwear thrown over the

rustic chair; silver-framed photographs; an exquisite, gold-mounted

crystal vase full of wild flowers on the pine shelf; satin bedroom

slippers on the clay hearth; a gorgeous, fur-trimmed dressing-gown over

the foot of her narrow, iron cot; all the ridiculous necessities that

Betty's maid had put into her trunk. Yes, Betty hated it all because it

was what she had always thirsted for. What a malevolent trick of fate

that Jasper should have brought her to Wyoming, that the doctor had

insisted upon at least a month of just this life. "Take her West," he

had said, and Betty, lying limp and white in her bed, her small head

sunk into the pillow, had jerked from head to foot. "Take her West. I

know a ranch in Wyoming--Yarnall's. She'll get outdoor exercise, tonic

air, sound sleep, release from all these pestiferous details, like a

cloud of flies, that sting women's nerves to death. Don't pay any

attention to whether she likes it or not. Let her behave like a naughty

child, let her kick and scream and cry. Pick her up, Morena, and carry

her off. Do you hear? Don't let her make you change your plans." The

doctor had seen his patient's convulsive jerk. "Pack her up. Make your

reservations and go straight to 'Buck' Yarnall's ranch, Lazy-Y,--that's

his brand, I believe,--Middle Fork, Wyoming. I'll send him a wire. He

knows me. She needs all outdoors to run about in. She needs joggin'

around all day through the sagebrush on a cow-pony in that sun; she

needs the smell of a camp-fire--Gad! wish I could get back to it

myself."

Betty, having heard this out, began to laugh. She laughed till they

gave her something to keep her quiet. But, except for that laughter,

she had made no protest whatever; she did not "kick and scream and

cry." In fact, though she looked like a child, she was not at all

inclined to such exhibitions. This doctor had not seen her through her

recent ordeal. Two years before her breakdown, Jasper had been

terribly hurt in an automobile accident, and Betty had come to him at

the hospital, had waited, as white as a snow-image, for the result of

the examination. They had told her emphatically that there was no

hope. Jasper Morena could not live for more than a few days. She must

not allow herself to hope. He might or might not regain consciousness.

If he did, it would be for a few minutes before the end. Betty had

listened with her white, rigid, child face, had thanked them, had gone

home. There in her exquisite, little sitting room above Central Park,

she had sat at her desk and written a few lines on square, gray note

paper.

"Jasper is dying," she had written. "By the time you get this, he

will be dead. If you can forgive me for having failed in courage

last year, come back. What I have been to you before I will be

again, only, this time we can love openly. Come back."

Then she had dropped her head on the desk and cried. Afterwards she

had addressed her letter to a certain Prosper Gael. The letter went to

Wyoming. When it reached its destination, it was taken over a

mountain-range by a patient Chinaman.

Three days later Jasper regained consciousness and began slowly to

return to health. He had the tenacious vitality of his race, and, in

his own spirit, an iron will to live. He kept Betty beside his bed for

hours, and held her cold hand in his long, sensitive one, and he

stared at her under his lashes till she thought she must go mad. But

she did not. She nursed him through an interminable convalescence. She

received Prosper, very early in this convalescence, by her husband's

bed, and Jasper had murmured gratitude for the emotion that threatened

to overwhelm his friend. It was not till some time--an extraordinarily

long time--after Morena's complete recovery that she had snapped like

a broken icicle. And then, forsooth, they had sent her to Wyoming to

get back her health!

Having paced away some of her restlessness, Betty stopped by the cabin

window and pushed aside one of the short, calico curtains. She looked

out on the court. A tall woman had just pulled up a bucket of water

from the well and had emptied it into a pitcher. She finished, let the

bucket drop with a whirr and a clash, and raised her head. For a

second she and Jasper Morena's wife looked at each other. Betty

nodded, smiled, and drew the curtain close.

CHAPTER III

JANE

After that night, there began a sort of persecution, skillfully

conducted by Jasper and Betty, against the ferocity of Jane. It was a

persecution impossible to imagine in any other setting, even the social

simplicity of Lazy-Y found itself a trifle amused. For Jasper, the

stately Jewish figure, would carry pails of water for Jane from the

well to the kitchen, would help her in the vegetable garden, and to

straighten out her recalcitrant stove-pipe; Betty would put on an apron

a mile too large, to wash dishes and shell peas. She would sit on the

kitchen table swinging her long, childlike legs and chatter amiably.

Jasper talked, too, to the virago, talked delightfully, about horses

and dogs,--he had a charming gift of humorous observation,--talked

about hunting and big-game shooting, about trapping, about travel, and,

at last, about plays. Undoubtedly Jane listened. Sometimes she laughed.

Once in a while she ejaculated, musically, "Well!" Occasionally she

swore.

One afternoon he met her riding home from an errand to a neighboring

ranch, and, turning his horse, rode with her. In worn corduroy skirt,

flannel shirt, and gray sombrero, she looked like a handsome, haggard

boy, and, that afternoon, there was a certain unusual wistfulness in

her eyes, and her mouth had relaxed a little from its bitterness.

Perhaps it was the beauty of a clear, keen summer day; without doubt,

also, she was touched by the courteous pleasure of his greeting and by

his giving up his ride in order to accompany her. She even unbent from

her silence and, for the first time, really talked to him. And she

spoke, too, in a new manner, using her beautiful voice with beautiful

carefulness. It was like a master-musician who, after a long illness,

takes up his beloved instrument and tentatively tests his shaken

powers. Jasper had much ado to keep his surprise to himself, for the

rough ranch girl could speak pure enough English if she would.

"You and your wife are leaving soon?" she asked him, and, when he

nodded, she gave a sigh. "I'll be missing you," she said, throwing

away her _brusquerie_ like a rag with which she was done. "You've been

company for me. You've made use of lots of patience and courage, but I

have really liked it. I've not got the ways of being sociable and I

don't know that I want ever to get them. I am not seeking for friends.

There isn't another person on the ranch that would dare talk to me as

you and Mrs. Morena have talked. They don't know anything about me

here and I don't mean that they should know." She paused, then gave

way to an impulse of confidence. "One of the boys asked me to marry

him. He came and shouted it through the window and I caught him with a

pan of water." She sighed. "I don't know rightly if he meant it for a

joke or not, but the laugh wasn't on me."

Jasper controlled his laughter, then saw the dry humor of her eyes and

lips and let out his mirth.

"Why, sir," said Jane, "you'd be surprised at the foolishness of men.

Sometimes it seems that, just for pure contrariness, they want to

marry her that least wants them about. The day I came tramping into

this valley, I stopped for food at the ranch of an old bachelor down

yonder at the ford. And he invited me to be his wife while I was

drinking a glass of water from his well. He told me how much money he

had and said he'd start my stove for me winter mornings. There's a

good husband! And he was sure kind to me even when I told him 'no.' 'T

was that same evening that the boy from Lazy-Y rode in and claimed me

for a cook. Mr. Yarnall is a trusting man. He took me and didn't ask

any questions. I told him I was 'Jane' and that I wasn't planning to

let him know more. He hasn't asked me another question since. He's a

gentleman, I figure it, and he's kind of quiet himself about what he

was before he came to this country. He's a man of fifty and he has

lots back of him only he's taken a fresh start." She sighed, "Folks

like you and Betty seem awfully open-hearted. It's living in cities, I

suppose, where every one knows every one else so well."

This astonishing picture of the candid simplicity of New York's social

life absorbed Jasper's attention for some time.

"Wouldn't you like to live in a city, Jane?"

She laughed her short, boyish "Hoo!" "It isn't what I would like, Mr.

Morena," she said. "Why, I'd like to see the world. I would like to be

that fellow who was condemned to wander all over the earth and never

to die. He was a Jew, too, wasn't he?"

Jasper flushed. People were not in the habit of making direct

reference to his nationality, and, being an Israelite who had early

cut himself off with dislike from his own people and cultivated the

society of Gentiles, "a man without a country," he was acutely

sensitive.

"The Wandering Jew? Yes. Where did you ever hear of him?"

"I read his story," she answered absently; "an awful long one, but

interesting, about lots of people, by Eugene Sue."

Jasper's lips fell apart and he stared. She had spoken unwittingly and

he could see that she was not thinking of him, that she was far away,

staring beyond her horse's head into the broad, sunset-brightened

west.

"Where were you schooled?" he asked her.

He had brought her back and her face stiffened. She gave him a

startled, almost angry look, dug her heels into her horse and broke

into a gallop; nor could he win from her another word.

A few days before he left, he took Yarnall into his confidence. At

first the rancher would do nothing but laugh. "Jane on the boards!

That's a notion!" followed by explosion after explosion of mirth. The

Jew waited, patient, pliant, smiling, and then enumerated his reasons.

He talked to Yarnall for an hour, at the end of which time, Yarnall,

his eyes still twinkling, sent for Jane.

The two men sat in a log-walled room, known as the office. Yarnall's

big desk crowded a stove. There was no other furniture except shelves

and a box seat beneath a window. Jasper sat on the end of the desk,

swinging his slim, well-booted leg; Yarnall, stocky, gray, shabby,

weather-beaten, leaned back in his wicker chair. The door which Jasper

faced was directly behind Yarnall. When Jane opened it, he turned.

The girl looked grim and a little pale. She was evidently frightened.

This summons from Yarnall suggested dismissal or reproof. She came

around to face him and stood there, looking fierce and graceful, her

head lowered, staring gloomily at him from under her brows. To Jasper

she gave not so much as a glance.

"Well, Jane, I fancy I shall have to let you go," said Yarnall. He was

not above tormenting the wild-cat. Female ferocity always excites the

teasing boy in a man. "You're getting too ambitious for us. You see,

once these rich New Yorkers take you up, you're no more use to a plain

ranchman like me."

"What are you drivin' at?" asked Jane.

"Do let me explain it to her, Yarnall!" Jasper snapped his elastic

fingers, color had risen to his face, and he looked annoyed. "Miss

Jane, won't you sit down?"

Jane turned her deep, indignant eyes upon him. "Are you and your wife

the rich New Yorkers he says are takin' me up?"

"No, no. He's joking. This is a serious business. It's of vital

importance to me and it ought to be of vital importance to you. Please

do sit down!"

Jane took a long step back and sat down on the settle under the long,

horizontal window. She folded her hands on her knee and looked up at

Morena. She had transferred her attention completely to him. Yarnall

watched them. He was an Englishman of much experience and this picture

of the skillful, cultivated, handsome Jew angling deftly for the

gaunt, young savage diverted him hugely. He screwed up his eyes to get

a picture of it.

"I am a producer and manager of plays," said Jasper, "which means that

I take a play written by a more gifted man and arrange it for the

stage. Have you ever seen a play?"

"No, sir."

"But you have some idea what they are?"

"Yes. I have read them. Shakespeare wrote quite a lot of that kind of

talking pieces, didn't he?"

Jasper was less surprised than Yarnall. "At present I have a play on

my hands which is a very brilliant and promising piece of work, but

which I have been unable to produce for lack of a heroine. There isn't

an actress on my list that can take the part and do it justice. Now,

Miss Jane, I believe that with some training you could take it to

perfection. My wife and I would like to take you to New York, paying

all your expenses, of course, and put you into training at once. It

would take a year's hard work to get you fitted for the part. Then

next fall we could bring out the play and I think I can promise you

success and fame and wealth in no small measure. I don't know you very

well; I don't know whether or not you are ambitious; but I do know

that every woman must love beauty and ease and knowledge and

experience. For what else," he smiled, "did Eve eat the apple? All

these you can have if you will let us take you East. Of course, if I

find you cannot take this part, I will hold myself accountable for

you. I will not let you be a loser in any way by the experiment. With

your beauty"--Yarnall fell back in his chair and gaped from the

excited speaker to the silent listener--"and your extraordinary voice,

and your magnetism, you must be especially fitted for a career of some

kind. I promise to find you your career."

Every drop of blood had fallen from Jane's face and the rough hands on

her knee were locked together.

"What part," she asked in a quick, low voice, "is this that you think

I could learn to do?"

Jasper changed his position. He came nearer and spoke more rapidly.

"It is the story of a girl, a savage girl, whom a man takes up and

trains. He trains her as a professional might train a lioness. It is a

passion with him to break spirits and shape them to his will. He

trains her with coaxing and lashing--not actual lashing, though I

believe in one place he does come near to beating her--and he gets her

broken so that she lies at his feet and eats out of his hand. All

this, you understand, while he's an exile from his own world. Then, in

the second act,--that is the second part of the play,--he takes his

tamed lioness back to civilization. They go to London and there the

woman does his training infinite credit. She is extraordinarily

beautiful; she is civilized, successful, courted. Her eccentricities

only add to her charm. So it goes on very prettily for a while. Then

he makes a mistake. He blunders very badly. He gives his lioness cause

for jealousy and--to come to the point--she flies at his throat. You

see, he hadn't really tamed her. She was under the skin, a lioness, a

beast, at heart."

Jasper had been absorbed in the plot and had not noticed Jane, but

Yarnall for several minutes had been leaning forward, his hands

tightened on the arms of his chair. The instant Jasper stopped he held

up his hand.

"Quiet, Jane," he said softly as a man might speak to a plunging

horse. "Steady!"

Jane got to her feet. She was very white. She put up her hand and

pressed the back of it against her forehead and from under this hand

she looked at the two men with eyes of such astonished pain and beauty

as they could never forget.

"Yes," she said presently; "that's something I _could_ do."

At once Jasper hastened to retrieve his error. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I've

been horribly clumsy. Do forgive me. Do let me explain. I didn't mean

that you were a wild--"

She let the hand fall and held it up to stop his speech. "I'm not

taking offense, Mr. Morena," she said. "You say you arrange plays and

that you have been seeking for some one to play that girl, that

lioness-girl who wasn't rightly tamed, though the man had done his

worst to break her?"

Jasper nodded with a puzzled, anxious air. For all his skill and

subtlety, he could not interpret her tone.

"And you think I'm beautiful?"

"My dear child, I know you are," said he. "You try to disguise it. And

I know that in many other ways you disguise yourself. I think you make

a great mistake. Your work is hard and rough--"

She smiled. "I'm not complaining of my work," she said. "It's rough

and so am I. Oh, yes, I'm real, true rough. I was born to roughness

and raised to it. I'm not anything I don't seem, Mr. Morena. I've had

rough travel all my days, only--only--" She sat down again, twisting

her hands painfully in her apron and bending her face down from the

sight of the two men. The line of her long, bent neck was a beautiful

thing to see. She spoke low and rapidly, holding down her emotion,

though she could not control all the exquisite modulations of her

voice. "There's only one part of my travel that I want to forget and

that's the one smooth bit. And it's hateful to me and you've been

reminding me of it. I must tell you now that I'd rather be burnt by a

white-hot iron"--here she gave him a wide and horrified look like a

child who speaks of some dreadful remembered punishment--"than do that

thing you've asked of me. I hate everything you've been telling me

about. I don't want to be beautiful. I don't want any one to be

telling me such things. I don't want to be any different from what I

am now. This is my real self. It is. I hate beauty. I hate it. I'm not

good enough to love it. Beauty and learning and--and music--"

Her head had been bending lower and lower, her voice rocking under its

weight of restrained anguish. On the word "music" she dropped her head

to her knees and was silent.

"I can't talk no more," she said, after a moment, and she stood up and

ran out of the room.

"I'll be d----d!" swore Yarnall.

But Jasper stood, his face pale, smiting one hand into the other.

"I feel that I, at least, deserve to be," he said.

CHAPTER IV

FLIGHT

There was a girl named Joan who followed Pierre Landis because he laid

his hand upon her wrist, and there was another Joan who fled up the

mountain-side at sight of him, as though the fire that had once

touched her shoulder had burnt its way into her heart. Then there was

a third Joan, a Joan astray. It was this Joan that had come to Lazy-Y

Ranch and had cooked for and bullied "the outfit"--a Joan of set face

and bitter tongue, whose two years' lonely battle with life had

twisted her youth out of its first comely straightness. In Joan's

brief code of moral law there was one sin--the dealings of a married

woman with another man. When Pierre's living and seeking face looked

up toward her where she stood on the mountain-side above Prosper's

cabin, she felt for the first time that she had sinned, and so, for

the first time, she was a sinner, and the inevitable agony of soul

began.

She fled and hid till dark, then prowled about till she knew that Wen

Ho was alone in the house. She came like a spirit from hell and

questioned him.

"What did the men ask? What did you tell them?"

The men had asked for a lady. He had told them, as Prosper had once

instructed him, that no lady was living there, that the man had just

gone. They had been satisfied and had left. But Joan was still in

terror. Pierre must never find her now. She had accepted the lie of a

stranger, had left her husband for dead, had made no effort to

ascertain the truth, and had "dealings with another man." Joan sat in

judgment and condemned herself to loneliness. She turned herself out

from all her old life as though she had been Cain, and, following Wen

Ho's trail over the mountains, had gone into strange lands to work for

her bread. She called herself "Jane" and her ferocity was the armor

for her beauty. Always she worked in fear of Pierre's arrival, and, as

soon as she had saved money enough for further traveling, she moved

on. She worked by preference on lonely ranches as cook or harvester,

and it was after two years of such life that she had drifted into

Yarnall's kitchen. She was then greatly changed, as a woman who works

to the full stretch of her strength, who suffers privation and

hardship, who gives no thought to her own youth and beauty, and who,

moreover, suffers under a scourge of self-scorn and fear, is bound to

change. Of all the people that had seen her after months of such

living, Jasper Morena was the only one to find her beautiful. But with

his sensitive observation he had seen through the shell to the

sweetness underneath; for surely Joan was sweet, a Friday's child. It

was good that Jasper had torn the skin from her wound, good that he

had broken up the hardness of her heart. She left him and Yarnall that

afternoon and went away to her cabin in the trees and lay face down on

the bare boards of the floor and was young again. Waves of longing for

love and beauty and adventure flooded her. For a while she had been

very beautiful and had been very passionately loved; for a while she

had been surrounded by beauty and taught its meanings. She had fled

from it all. She hated it, yes, but she longed for it with every fiber

of her being. The last two years were scalded away. She was Joan, who

had loved Pierre; Joan, whom Prosper Gael had loved.

Toward morning, dawn feeling with white fingers through the pine

boughs into her uncurtained window, Joan stopped her weeping and stood

up. She was very tired and felt as though all the hardness and

strength had been beaten from her heart. She opened her door and

looked at pale stars and a still, slowly brightening world. In a

hollow below the pines a stream ran and poured its hoarse, hurrying

voice into the silence. Joan bent under the branches, undressed and

bathed. The icy water shocked life back into her spirit. She began to

tingle and to glow. In spite of herself she felt happier. She had been

stony for so long, neither sorrowful nor glad; now, after the night of

sharp pain, she was aware of the gladness of morning. She came up from

her plunge, glowing and beautiful, with loose, wet hair.

In the corral the men were watering their teams; above them on the

edge of a mesa, against the rosy sky, the other ponies, out all night

on the range, were trooping, driven by a cowboy who darted here and

there on his nimble pony, giving shrill cries. In the clear air every

syllable was sharp to the ear, every tint and line sharp to the eye.

It was beautiful, very beautiful, and it was near and dear to her,

native to her--this loveliness of quick action, of inarticulate

calling to dumb beasts, of work, of simple, often repeated beginnings.

She was glad that she was working with her hands. She twisted up her

hair and went over to the ranch-house where she began soberly and

thankfully to light her kitchen fire.

It was after breakfast, two or three mornings later, when a stranger

on a chestnut pony rode into Yarnall's ranch, tied his pony to a tree,

and, striding across the cobbled square, came to knock at the office

door. At the moment, Yarnall, on the other side of the house, was

saying farewell to his guests, and helping the men pile the baggage

into the two-seated wagon, so this other visitor, getting no answer to

his knock, turned and looked about the court. He did not, it was

evident, mind waiting. It was to be surmised from the look of him that

he was used to it; patient and not to be discouraged by delay. He was

a very brown young man of quite astounding beauty and his face had

been schooled to keenness and restraint. He was well-dressed, very

clean, an outdoor man, a rider, but a man who had, in some sense,

arrived. He had the inimitable stamp of achievement. He had been hard

driven--the look of that, too, was there; he had been driven to more

than ordinary effort. One of the men, seeing him, walked over and

spoke respectfully.

"You want to see Mr. Yarnall?"

"Yes, sir." The man's eyes were searching the ranch-house wistfully

again. "I would like to see him if I can. I have some questions to ask

him."

"He's round the house, gettin' rid of a bunch of dudes. Some job. Both

hands tied up. Will you go round or wait?"

The stranger dropped to his heels, squatted, and rolled a cigarette.

"I'll wait," he murmured. "You can let him know when the dudes make

their get-away. He'll get round to me. My name? It won't mean anything

to him--Pierre Landis."

He did not go round the house, and Yarnall, being very busy and

perturbed for some time after the departure of his guests, did not get

round to him till nearly noon. By that time he was sitting on the

step, his back against the wall, still smoking and still wistfully

observant of his surroundings.

He stood up when Yarnall came.

"Sorry," said the latter; "that fool boy didn't tell me you were here

till ten minutes ago. Come in. You'll stop for dinner--if we get any

to-day."

"Thank you," said Pierre.

He came in and talked and stayed for dinner. Yarnall was used to the

Western fashion of doing business. He knew that it would be a long

time before the young man would come to his point. But the Englishman

was in no hurry, for he liked his visitor and found his talk diverting

enough. Landis had been in Alaska--a lumber camp. He had risen to be

foreman and now he was off for a vacation, but had to go back soon. He

had been everywhere. It seemed to Yarnall that the stranger had

visited every ranch in the Rocky Mountain belt.

After dinner, strolling beside his host toward his horse, Pierre

spoke, and before Yarnall had heard a word he knew that the long delay

had been caused by suppressed emotion. Pierre, when he did ask his

question, was white to the lips.

"I've taken a lot of your time," he said slowly. "I came to ask you

about someone. I heard that you had a woman on your ranch, a woman who

came in and didn't give you any history. I want to see her if I may."

He was actually fighting an unevenness of breath, and Yarnall,

unemotional as he was, was gripped with sympathetic suspense. "I

want," stammered the young man, "to know her name."

Yarnall swore. "Her name, as she gave it," said he, "is Jane. But, my

boy, you can't see her. She left this morning."

Pierre raised a white, tense face.

"Left?" He turned as if he would run after her.

"Yes, sir. These people I've had here took her away with them. That

is, they've been urging her to go, but she'd refused. Then, suddenly,

this morning, just as they were putting the trunks in, up came Jane,

white as chalk, asking them to take her with them, said she must go.

Well, sir, they rigged her up with some traveling clothes and drove

away with her. That was six hours ago. By now they're in the train,

bound for New York."

Yarnall's guest looked at him without speaking, and Yarnall nervously

went on, "She's been with us about six months, Landis, and I don't

know anything about her. She was tall, gray eyes, black hair, slow

speaking, and with the kind of voice you'd be apt to notice ... yes, I

see she's the girl you've been looking for. I can give you the New

York people's address, but first, for Jane's sake,--I'm a pretty good

friend of hers, I think a lot of Jane,--I'll have to know what you

want with her--what she is to you."

Pierre's pupils widened till they all but swallowed the smoke-colored

iris.

"She is my wife," he said.

Again Yarnall swore. But he lit a cigarette and took his time about

answering. "Well, sir," he said, "you must excuse me, but--it was

because she saw you, I take it, that Jane cut off this morning. That's

clear. Now, I don't know what would make a girl run off from her

husband. She might have any number of reasons, bad and good, but it

seems to me that it would be a pretty strong one that would make a

girl run off, with a look such as she wore, from a man like you. Did

you treat her well, Landis?"

It had the effect of a lash taken by a penitent. The man shrank a

little, whitened, endured. "I can't tell you how I treated her," he

said in a dangerous voice; "it don't bear tellin'. But--I want her

back. I was--I was--that was three years ago; I am more like a man

now. You'll give me the people's name, their address?..."

Pierre laid his hand on the older man's wrist and gave it a queer

urgent and beseeching shake.

After a moment of searching scrutiny, Yarnall bent his head.

"Very well," said he shortly; "come in."

CHAPTER V

LUCK'S PLAY

A young man who had just landed in New York from one of the big,

adventurous transatlantic liners hailed a taxicab and was quickly

drawn away into the glitter and gayety of a bright winter morning. He

sat forward eagerly, looking at everything with the air of a lad on a

holiday. He was a young man, but he was not in his first youth, and

under a heavy sunburn he was pale and a trifle worn, but there was

about him a look of being hard and very much alive. Under a broad brow

there were hawk eyes of greenish gray, a delicate beak, a mouth and

chin of cleverness. It was an interesting face and looked as though it

had seen interesting things. In fact, Prosper Gael had just returned

from his three months of ambulance service in France, and it was the

extraordinary success of his play, "The Leopardess," that had chiefly

brought him back.

"Dear Luck," his manager had written, using the college title which

Prosper's name and unvarying good fortune suggested, "you'd better

come back and gather up some of these laurels that are smothering us

all. The time is very favorable for the disappearance of your

anonymity. I, for one, find it more and more difficult to keep the

secret. So far, not even your star knows it. She calls you 'Mr. Luck'

... to that extent I have been indiscreet...."

Prosper had another letter in his pocket, a letter that he had re-read

many times, always with an uneasy conflict of emotions. He was in a

sort of hot-cold humor over it, in a fever-fit that had a way of

turning into lassitude. He postponed analysis indefinitely. Meanwhile

his eyes searched the bright, cold city, its crowds, its traffics, its

windows--most of all, its placards, and, not far to seek, there were

the posters of "The Leopardess." He leaned out to study one of them; a

tall, wild-eyed woman crouched to spring upon a man who stared at her

in fear. Prosper dropped back with a gleaming smile of amused

excitement. "They've made it look like cheap melodrama," he said to

himself; "and yet it's a good thing, the best thing I've ever done.

Yet they will vulgarize the whole idea with their infernal notions of

'what the public wants.' Morena is as bad as the rest of them!" He

expressed disgust, but underneath he was aglow with pride and

interest. "There's a performance to-night. I'll dine with Jasper. I'll

have to see Betty first...." His thoughts trailed off and he fell into

that hot-cold confusion, that uncomfortable scorching fog of mood. The

cab turned into Fifth Avenue and became a scale in the creeping

serpent of vehicles that glided, paused, and glided again past the

thronged pavements. Prosper contrasted everything with the grim

courage and high-pitched tragedy of France. He could not but wonder at

the detached frivolity of these money-spenders, these spinners in the

sun. How soon would the shadow fall upon them too and with what change

of countenance would they look up! To him the joyousness seemed almost

childish and yet he bathed his fagged spirit in it. How high the white

clouds sailed, how blue was the midwinter sky! How the buildings

towered, how quickly the people stepped! Here were the pretty painted

faces, the absurd silk stockings, the tripping, exquisitely booted

feet, the swinging walk, the tall, up-springing bodies of the women he

remembered. He regarded them with impersonal delight, untinged by any

of his usual cynicism.

It was late afternoon when Prosper, obedient to a telephone call from

Betty, presented himself at the door of Morena's house, just east of

the Park, off Fifth Avenue; a very beautiful house where the wealthy

Jew had indulged his passion for exquisite things. Prosper entered its

rich dimness with a feeling of oppression--that unanalyzed mood of hot

and cold feeling intensified to an almost unbearable degree. In the

large carved and curtained drawing-room he waited for Betty. The

tea-things were prepared; there would be no further need of service

until Betty should ring. Everything was arranged for an uninterrupted

tete-a-tete. Prosper stood near an ebony table, his shoulder

brushed by tall, red roses, and felt his nerves tighten and his pulses

hasten in their beat. "The tall child ... the tall child ..." he had

called her by that name so often and never without a swift and

stabbing memory of Joan, and of Joan's laughter which he had silenced.

He took out the letter he had lately received from Betty and re-read

it and, as he read, a deep line cut between his eyes. "You say you

will not come back unless I can give you more than I have ever given

you in the past. You say you intend to cut yourself free, that I have

failed you too often, that you are starved on hope. I'm not going to

ask much more patience of you. I failed you that first time because I

lost courage; the second time, fate failed us. How could I think that

Jasper would get well when the doctors told me that I mustn't allow

myself even a shadow of hope! Now, I think that Jasper, himself, is

preparing my release. This all sounds like something in a book. That's

because you've hurt me. I feel frozen up. I couldn't bear it if now,

just when the door is opening, you failed me. Prosper, you are my

lover for always, aren't you? I have to believe that to go on living.

You are the one thing in my wretched life that hasn't lost its value.

Now, read this carefully; I am going to be brutal. Jasper has been

unfaithful to me. I know it. I have sufficient evidence to prove it in

a law court and I shall not hesitate to get a divorce. Tear this up,

please. Now, of all times, we must be extraordinarily careful. There

has never been a whisper against us and there mustn't be. Jasper must

not suspect. A counter-suit would ruin my life. I must talk it over

with you. I'll see you once alone--just once--before I leave Jasper

and begin the suit. We must have patience for just this last bit. It

will seem very long...."

Prosper folded the letter. He was conscious of a faint feeling of

sickness, of fear. Then he heard Betty's step across the marble

pavement of the hall. She parted the heavy curtains, drew them

together behind her, and stood, pale with joy, opening and shutting

her big eyes. Then she came to meet him, held him back, listening for

any sound that might predict interruption, and gave herself to his

arms. She was no longer pale when he let her go. She went a few steps

away and stood with her hands before her face, then she went to sit by

the tea-table. They were both flushed. Betty's eyes were shining under

their fluttering lids. Prosper rejoiced in his own emotion. The mental

fog had lifted and the feeling of faintness was gone.

"You've decided not to break away altogether, then?" she asked, giving

him a quick glance.

He shook his head. "Not if what you have written me is true. I've had

such letters from you before and I've grown very suspicious. Are you

sure this time?" He laid stress upon his bitterness. It was his one

weapon against her and he had been sharpening it with a vague purpose.

"Oh," said Betty, speaking low and furtively, "Jasper is fairly

caught. I have a reliable witness in the girl's maid. There is no

doubt of his guilt, Prosper, none. Everyone is talking of it. He has

been perfectly open in his attentions."

Every minute Betty looked younger and prettier, more provoking. Her

child-mouth with its clever smile was bright as though his kiss had

painted it.

"Who is the girl?" asked Prosper. He was deeply flushed. Being capable

of simultaneous points of view, he had been stung by that cool phrase

of Betty's concerning "Jasper's guilt."

"I'll tell you in a moment. Did you destroy my letter?"

He shook his head.

"Oh, Prosper, please!"

He took it out, tore it up, and walking over to the open fire, burned

the papers. He came back to his tea. "Well, Betty?"

"The girl," said Betty, "is the star in your play, 'The Leopardess,'

the girl that Jasper picked up two Septembers ago out West. He has

written to you about her. She was a cook, if you please, a hideous

creature, but Jasper saw at once what there was in her. She has made

the play. You'll have to acknowledge that yourself when you see her.

She is wonderful. And, partly owing to the trouble I've taken with

her, the girl is beautiful. One wouldn't have thought it possible. She

is not charming to me, she's not in the least subtle. It's odd that

she should have had such an effect upon Jasper, of all men...."

Prosper sipped his tea and listened. He looked at her and was bitterly

conscious that the excitement which had pleased and surprised him was

dying out. That faintness again assailed his spirit. He was feeling

stifled, ashamed, bored. Yes, that was it, bored. That life of service

and battle-danger in France had changed him more than he had realized

till now. He was more simple, more serious, more moral, in a certain

sense. He was like a man who, having denied the existence of Apollyon,

has come upon him face to face and has been burnt by his breath. Such

a man is inevitably moral. All this long, intricate intrigue with the

wife of a man who called him friend, seemed to him horribly unworthy.

If Betty had been a great lover, if she had not lost courage at the

eleventh hour and left him to face that terrible winter in Wyoming,

then their passion might have justified itself: but now there was a

staleness in their relationship. He hated the thought of the long

divorce proceedings, of the decent interval, of the wedding, of the

married life. He had never really wanted that. And now, in the ebb of

his passion, how could he force himself to take her when he had

learned to live more keenly, more completely without her! He would

have to take her, to spend his days and nights with her, to travel

with her. She would want to visit that gay, little forsaken house in a

Wyoming canyon. With vividness he saw a girl lying prone on a black

rug before a dancing fire, her hair all fallen about her face, her

secret eyes lifted impatiently from the book--"You had ought to be

writin', Mr. Gael...."

"What are you smiling for, Prosper?" Betty asked sharply.

He looked up, startled and confused. "Sorry. I've got into beastly

absent-minded habits. Is that Morena?"

Jasper opened the curtains and came in, greeting Prosper in his

stately, charming fashion. "To-night," he said, "we'll show you a

leopardess worth looking at, won't we, Betty? But first you must tell

us about your own experience. You look wonderfully fit, doesn't he,

Betty? And changed. They say the life out there stamps a man, and

they're right. It's taken some of that winged-demon look out of your

face, Prosper, put some soul into it."

He talked and Betty laughed, showing not the slightest evidence of

effort, though the soul Jasper had seen in Prosper's face felt shriveled

for her treachery. Prosper wondered if she could be right in her surmise

about Jasper. The Jew was infinitely capable of dissimulation, but there

was a clarity of look and smile that filled Prosper with doubts. And the

eyes he turned upon his wife were quite as apparently as ever the eyes

of a disappointed man.

So absorbed was he in such observations that he found it intolerably

difficult to fix his attention on the talk. Jasper's fluency seemed to

ripple senselessly about his brain.

"You must consent to one thing, Luck: you must allow me to choose my

own time for announcing the authorship." This found its way partially

to his intelligence and he gave careless assent.

"Oh, whenever you like, as soon as I've had my fun."

"Of course--" Morena was thoughtful for an instant. "How would it do

for me to leave it with Melton, the business manager? Eh? Suppose I

phone him and talk it over a little. He'll want to wait till toward

the end of the run. He's keen; has just the commercial sense of the

born advertiser. Let him choose the moment. Then we can feel sure of

getting the right one. Will you, Luck?"

"If you advise it. You ought to know."

"You see, I'm so confoundedly busy, so many irons in the fire, I might

just miss the psychic moment. I think Melton's the man--I'll call him

up to-night before we leave. Then I won't forget it and I'll be sure

to catch him too."

Again Prosper vaguely agreed and promptly forgot that he had given his

permission. Later, there came an agonizing moment when he would have

given the world to recall his absent, careless words.

With an effort Prosper kept his poise, with an effort, always

increasing, he talked to Jasper while Betty dressed, and kept up his

end at dinner. The muscles round his mouth felt tight and drawn, his

throat was dry. He was glad when they got into the limousine and

started theaterwards. It had been a long time since he had been put

through this particular ordeal and he was out of practice.

They reached the house just as the lights went out. Prosper was amused

at his own intense excitement. "I didn't know I was still such a kid,"

he said, flashing a smile, the first spontaneous one he had given her,

upon Betty who sat beside him in the proscenium box.

The success of his novel had had no such effect upon him as this. It

was entrancing to think that in a few moments the words he had written

would come to him clothed in various voices, the people his brain had

pictured would move before him in flesh and blood, doing what he had

ordained that they should do. When the curtain rose, he had forgotten

his personal problem, had forgotten Betty. He leaned forward, his

elbows on his knees, his chin in his hand.

The scene was of a tropical island, palms, a strip of turquoise sea. A

girl pushed aside the great fronds of ferns and stepped down to the

beach. At her appearance the audience broke into applause. She was a

tall girl, her stained legs and arms bare below her ragged dress, her

black hair hung wild and free about her face and neck. As the daughter

of a native mother and an English father, her beauty had been made to

seem both Saxon and savage. Stained and painted, darkened below the

great gray eyes, Joan with her brows and her classic chin and throat,

Joan with her secret, dangerous eyes and lithe, long body, made an

arresting picture enough against the setting of vivid green and blue.

She moved slowly, deliberately, naturally, and stood, hands on hips,

to watch a ship sail into the turquoise harbor. It was not like

acting, she seemed really to look. She threw back her head and gave a

call. It was the name of her stage brother, but it came from her deep

chest and through her long column of a throat like music. Prosper

brought down his hands on the railing before him, half pushed himself

up, turned a blind look upon Betty, who laid a restraining hand upon

his arm.

He whispered a name, which Betty could not make out, then he sat down,

moistened his lips with his tongue, and sat through the entire first

act and neither moved nor spoke. As the curtain went down he stood up.

"I must go out," he said, and hesitated in the back of the box till

Jasper came over to him with an anxious question. Then he began to

stammer nervously. "Don't tell her, Jasper, don't tell her."

"Tell her what, man? Tell whom?" Jasper gave him a shake. "Don't you

like Jane? Isn't she wonderful?"

"Yes, yes, extraordinary!"

"Made for the part?"

"No." Prosper's face twisted into a smile. "No. The part came second,

she was there first. Morena, promise me you won't tell her who wrote

the play."

"Look here, Prosper, suppose you tell me what's wrong. Have you seen a

ghost?"

Prosper laughed; then, seeing Betty, her face a rigid question, he

struggled to lay hands upon his self-control.

"Something very astonishing has happened, Morena,--one of those

'things not dreamt of in a man's philosophy.' I can't tell you. Have

you arranged for me to meet Jane West?"

"After the show, yes, at supper."

"But not as the author?"

"No. I was waiting for you to tell her that."

"She mustn't know. And--and I can't meet her that way, at supper."

Again he made visible efforts at self-control. "Don't tell Betty what

a fool I am. I'll go out a minute. I'll be all right."

Betty was coming toward them. He gave a painful smile and fled.

CHAPTER VI

JOAN AND PROSPER

The situation was no doubt an extraordinary, an unimaginable one, but

it had to be met. When he returned to the box, Prosper had himself in

hand, and, sitting a little farther back than before, he watched the

second act with a sufficiency of outward calm.

This part was the most severe test of his composure, for he had

fashioned it almost in detail upon that idyll in a canyon. There were

even speeches of Joan's that he had used. To sit here and watch Joan

herself go through it, while he looked on, was an exciting form of

torment. The setting was different, tropical instead of Northern, and

the half-native heroine was more passionate, more emotional, more

animal than Joan. Nevertheless, the drama was a repetition. As Prosper

had laid his trap for Joan, silently, subtly undermining her whole

mental structure, using her loneliness, playing upon the artist soul

of her, so did this Englishman lay his trap for Zona. He was more

cruel than Prosper, rougher, necessarily more dramatic, but there was

all the essence of the original drama, the ensnarement of a simple,

direct mind by a complex and skillful one. Joan's surrender, Prosper's

victory, were there. He wondered how Joan could act it, play the part

in cold blood. Now he was condemned to live in his own imagination

through Joan's tragedy. There was that first pitifulness of a tamed

and broken spirit; then later, in London, the agony of loneliness, of

separation, of gradual awakening to the change in her master's heart.

Prosper had written the words, but it was Joan who, with her voice,

the music of memory-shaken heart-strings, made the words alive and

meaningful. Others in the audience might wonder over the girl's

ability to interpret this unusual experience, to make it natural,

human, inevitable. But Prosper did not wonder. He knew that simply she

forced herself to re-live this most painful part of her own life and

to re-live it articulately. What, in God's name, had induced her to do

it? Necessity? Poverty? Morena? All at once he remembered Betty's

belief, that Joan was the manager's mistress--his wild, beautiful

Joan, Joan the creation of his own wizardry. This thought gave him

such pain that he whitened.

"Prosper," murmured Betty, "you must tell me what is wrong. Evidently

your nerves are in bad shape. Is the excitement too much for you?"

"I believe it is," he said, avoiding her eyes and moving stiff, white

lips; "I've never seen such acting. I--I--Morena says he'll let me see

her in her dressing-room afterwards. You see, Betty, I'm badly shaken

up."

"Ye-es," drawled Betty, and looked at him through narrowed lids, and

she sat with this look on her face and with her fingers locked, when

Prosper, not giving her further notice, followed Morena out.

"Jasper,"--Prosper held his friend back in the middle of a passage

that led to the dressing-rooms,--"I want very particularly to see Miss

West alone. I am very much moved by her performance and I want to tell

her so. Also, I want her to express herself naturally with no idea of

my being the author of the play and without the presence of her

manager. Will you just ask if she will see a friend of yours--alone?"

Jasper smiled his subtle smile. "Of course, Prosper. It's all as clear

as daylight."

Prosper did not notice the Jew's intelligent expression. He was too

much absorbed in his own excitement. In a moment he would be with

Joan--Joan, his love of winter nights!

Morena tapped upon a door. A maid half-opened it.

"Ask Miss West, please, if she will see a friend of Mr. Morena's. Tell

her I particularly wish her to give him a private interview." He

scribbled a line on a card and the maid took it in.

In five minutes, during which the two men waited silently, she came

back.

"Miss West will see your friend, sir."

"Ah! Then I'll take myself off. Prosper, will you join Betty and me at

supper?"

"No, thanks. I'll have my brief interview with Miss West and then go

home, if you'll forgive me. I'm about all in. New York's too much for

a man just home from the front."

Jasper laid his hand for a moment on Prosper's shoulder, smiled,

shrugged, and turned away. Prosper waited till his friend was out of

sight and hearing, then knocked and was admitted to the dressing-room

of Miss Jane West.

She had not changed from the evening dress she had worn in the last

scene nor had she yet got rid of her make-up. She was sitting in a

narrow-backed chair that had been turned away from the dressing-table.

The maid was putting away some costumes.

Prosper walked half across the room and stopped.

"Miss West," he said quietly.

She stood up. The natural color left her face ghastly with patches of

paint and daubs of black. She threw back her head and said, "Prosper!"

just above her breath.

"Go out, Henrietta." This was spoken to the maid in the voice of Jane

the virago and Henrietta fled.

At sight of Joan, Prosper had won back instantly his old poise, his

old feeling of ascendancy.

"Joan, Joan," he said gently; "was ever anything so strange? Why

didn't you let me know? Why didn't you answer my letters? Why didn't

you take my money? I have suffered greatly on your account."

Joan laughed. Four years ago she would not have been capable of this

laugh, and Prosper started.

"I wrote again and again," he said passionately. "Wen Ho told me that

you had gone, that he didn't know anything about your plans. I went

out to Wyoming, to our house. I scoured the country for you. Did you

know that?"

"No," said Joan slowly, "I didn't know that But it makes no difference

to me."

They were still standing a few paces apart, too intent upon their

inner tumult to heed any outward situation. She lowered her head in

that dangerous way of hers, looking up at him from under her brows.

Her color had returned and the make-up had a more natural look.

"Maybe you did write, maybe you did send money, maybe you did come

back--I don't care anything for all that." She made a gesture as if to

sweep something away. "The day after you left me in that house,

Pierre, my husband, came up the trail. He was taking after me. He

meant to fetch me home. You told me"--she began to tremble so

violently that the jewels on her neck clicked softly--"you told me he

was _dead_."

Prosper came closer, she moving back, till, striking the chair, she

sat down on it and looked up at him with her changed and embittered

eyes.

"Would you have gone back to him, Joan Landis, after he had tied you

up and branded your shoulder with his cattlebrand?"

"What has that got to do with it?" she asked, her voice lifting on a

wave of anger. "That was between my man and me. That was not for you

to judge. He loved me. It was through loving me too much, too

ignorantly, that he hurt me so." She choked. "But you--"

"Joan," said Prosper, and he laid his hand on her cold and rigid

fingers, "I loved you too."

She was still and stiff. After a long silence she seemed to select one

question from a tide of them.

"Why did you leave me?"

"I wrote you a full explanation. The letter came back to me unread."

Again Joan gave the laugh and the gesture of disdain.

"That doesn't matter ... your loving or not loving. You made use of me

for your own ends, and when you saw fit, you left me. But that's not

my complaint. I don't say I didn't deserve that. I was easy to use.

But it was all based on what wasn't true. I was married, my man was

living, and I had dealings with you. That was sin. That was horrible.

That was what my mother did. She was a ----" Joan used the coarse and

ugly word her father had taught her, and Prosper laid a hand over her

mouth.

"Joan! No! Never say it, never think it. You are clean."

Joan twisted herself free, stood up, and walked away. "I am _that_!"

she said grimly; "and it was you that made me. You took lots of

trouble to make me see things in a way where nothing a person wants is

either right or wrong. You made me thirsty with your talk and your

books and your music, and when I was tormented with thirst, you came

and offered me a drink of water. That was it. I don't care about your

not marrying me. I still don't see that that has much to do with it

except, perhaps, that a man would be caring to give any woman he

rightly loves whatever help or cherishing or gifts the world has

decided to give her. But, you see, Prosper, we didn't start fair. You

knew that Pierre was alive."

"But, Joan, you say yourself that marrying--"

She stopped him with so fierce a gesture that he flinched. "Yes.

Pierre did rightly love me. He gave me his best as he knew it. Oh, he

was ignorant, a savage, I guess, like I was. But he did rightly love

me. He was not trying to break my spirit nor to tame me, nor to amuse

himself with me, nor to give me a longing for beauty and easiness and

then leave me to fight through my own rough life without any of those

things. Did you really think, Prosper Gael, that I would stay in your

house and live on your money till you should be caring to come back to

me--if ever you would care? Did you honestly think that you would be

coming back--as--as my lover? No. Whatever it was that took you away,

it was likely to keep you from me for always, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said Prosper in a muffled voice, "it was likely to. But, Joan,

Fate was on your side. Since I have been yours, I haven't belonged to

any one but you. You've put your brand on me."

"I don't want to hear about you," Joan broke in. "I am done with you.

Have you seen this play?"

"Yes." He found that in telling her so he could not meet her eyes.

"Well, the man who wrote that knew what you are, and, if he didn't,

every one that has seen me act in it, knows what you are." She paused,

breathing fast and trembling. "Good-bye," she said.

He went vaguely toward the door, then threw up his head defiantly.

"No," he said, "it's not going to be good-bye. I've found you. You

must let me tell you the truth about myself. Come, Joan, you're as

just as Heaven. You never read my explanations. You've never heard my

side of it. You'll let me come to see you and you'll hear me out.

Don't do me an injustice. I'll leave the whole thing in your hands

after that. But you must give me that one chance."

"Chance?" repeated Joan. "Chance for what?"

"Oh,"--Prosper flung up his lithe, long hands--"oh, for nothing but a

cleansing in your sight. I want what forgiveness I can wring from you.

I want what understanding I can force from you. That's all."

She thought, standing there, still and tall, her arms hanging, her

eyes wide and secret, as he had remembered them in her thin, changed,

so much more expressive face.

"Very well," she said, "you may come. I'll hear you out." She gave him

the address and named an afternoon hour. "Good-night."

It was a graceful and dignified dismissal. Prosper bit his lip, bowed

and left her.

As the door closed upon her, he knew that it had closed upon the only

real and vivid presence in his life. War had burnt away his glittering,

clever frivolity. Betty was the adventure, Betty was the tinsel; Joan

was the grave, predestined woman of his man. For the first time in his

life he found himself face to face with the cleanness of despair.

CHAPTER VII

AFTERMATH

Joan waited for Prosper on the appointed afternoon. There was a fire

on her hearth and a March snow-squall tapped against the window panes.

The crackle of the logs inside and that eerie, light sound outside

were so associated with Prosper that, even before he came, Joan,

sitting on one side of the hearth, closed her eyes and felt that he

must be opposite to her in his red-lacquered chair, his long legs

stuck out in front, his amused and greedy eyes veiled by a cloud of

cigarette smoke.

Since she had seen him at the theater, she had been suffering from

sleeplessness. At night she would go over and over the details of

their intercourse, seeing them, feeling them, living them in the light

of later knowledge, till the torment was hardly to be borne. Three

days and nights of this inner activity had brought back that sharp

line between her brows and the bitter tightening of her lips.

This afternoon she was white with suspense. Her dread of the impending

interview was like a physical illness. She sat in a high-backed chair,

hands along the arms, head resting back, eyes half-closed, in that

perfect stillness of which the animal and the savage are alone

entirely capable. There were many gifts that Joan had brought from the

seventeen years on Lone River. This grave immobility was one. She was

very carefully dressed in a gown that accentuated her height and

dignity. And she wore a few jewels. She wanted, pitifully enough, to

mark every difference between this Joan and the Joan whom Prosper had

drawn on his sled up the canyon trail. If he expected to force her

back into the position of enchanted leopardess, to see her "lie at his

feet and eat out of his hand," as Morena had once described the plight

of Zona, he would see at a glance that she was no longer so easily

mastered. In fact, sitting there, she looked as proud and perilous as

a young Medea, black-haired with long throat and cold, malevolent

lips. It was only in the eyes--those gray, unhappy, haunted eyes--that

Joan gave away her eternal simplicity of heart. They were unalterably

tender and lonely and hurt. It was the look in them that had prompted

Shorty's description, "She's plumb movin' to me--looks about halfway

between 'You go to hell' and 'You take me in your arms to rest.'"

Prosper was announced, and Joan, keeping her stillness, merely turned

her head toward him as he came into the room.

She saw his rapid observation of the room, of her, even before she

noticed the very apparent change in him. For he, too, was haggard and

utterly serious as she did not remember him. He stood before her fire

and asked her jerkily if she would let him smoke. She said "Yes," and

those were the only words spoken for five unbearable minutes the

seconds of which her heart beat out like a shaky hammer in some worn

machine.

Prosper smoked and stood there looking, now at her, now at the fire.

At last, with difficulty, he smiled. "You are not going to make it

easy for me, are you, Joan?"

For her part she was not looking at him. She kept her eyes on the fire

and this averted look distressed and irritated his nerves.

"I am not trying to make it hard," she said; "I want you to say what

you came to say and go."

"Did _you_ ever love me, Joan?"

He had said it to force a look from her, but it had the effect only of

making her more still, if possible.

"I don't know," she said slowly, answering with her old directness. "I

thought you needed me. I was alone. I was scared of the emptiness when

I went out and looked down the valley. I thought Pierre had gone out

of the world and there was no living thing that wanted me. I came back

and you met me and you put your arms round me and you said"--she

closed her eyes and repeated his speech as though she had just heard

it--"'Don't leave me, Joan.'"

Her voice was more than ever before moving and expressive. Prosper

felt that half-forgotten thrill. The muscles of his throat contracted.

"Joan, I did want you. I spoke the truth," he pleaded.

She went on with no impatience but very coldly. "You came to tell me

your side. Will you tell me, please?"

For the first time she looked into his eyes and he drew in his breath

at the misery of hers.

"I built that cabin, Joan," he said, "for another woman."

"Your wife?" asked Joan.

"No."

"For the one I said must have been like a tall child? She wasn't your

wife? She was dead?"

Prosper shook his head. "No. Did you think that? She was a woman I

loved at that time very dearly and she was already married to another

man."

"You built that house for her? I don't understand."

"She had promised to leave her husband and to come away with me. I had

everything ready, those rooms, those clothes, those materials, and

when I went out to get her, I had a message saying that her courage

had failed her, that she wouldn't come."

"She was a better woman than me," said Joan bitterly.

Prosper laughed. "By God, she was not! She sent me down to hell. I

couldn't go back to the East again. I had laid very careful and

elaborate plans. I was trapped out there in that horrible winter

country...."

"It was not horrible," said Joan violently; "it was the most

wonderful, beautiful country in all the world." And tears ran suddenly

down her face.

But she would not let him come near to comfort her. "Go on," she said

presently.

"Before you came, Joan," Prosper went on, "it was horrible. It was

like being starved. Every thing in the house reminded me of--her. I

had planned it all very carefully and we were to have been--happy. You

can fancy what it was to be there alone."

Joan nodded. She _was_ just and she was honestly trying to put herself

in his place. "Yes," she said; "if I had gone back and Pierre had been

dead, his homestead would have been like that to me."

"It was because I was so miserable that I went out to hunt. I'd scour

the country all day and half the night to tire myself out, that I

could get some sleep. I was pretty far from home that moonlight night

when I heard you scream for help...."

Joan's face grew whiter. "Don't tell about that," she pleaded.

He paused, choosing another opening. "After I had bandaged you and

told you that Pierre was dead--and I honestly thought he was--I didn't

know what to do with you. You couldn't be left, and there was no

neighbor nearer than my own house; besides, I had shot a man, and,

perhaps,--I don't know, maybe I was influenced by your beauty, by my

own crazy loneliness.... You were very beautiful and very desolate. I

was in a fury over the brute's treatment of you...."

"Hush!" said Joan; "you are not to talk about Pierre."

Prosper shrugged. "I decided to take you home with me. I wanted you

desperately, just, I believe, to take care of, just to be kind

to--truly, Joan, I was lonely to the point of madness. Some one to

care for, some one to talk to, was absolutely necessary to save my

reason. So when I was leading you out, I--I saw Pierre's hand move--"

Joan stood up. After a moment she controlled herself with an effort

and sat down again. "Go on. I can stand it," she said.

"And I thought to myself, 'The devil is alive and he deserves to be

dead. This woman can never live with him again. God wouldn't sanction

such an act as giving her back to his hands.' And I was half-mad

myself, I'd been alone so long ... I stood so you couldn't see him,

Joan, and I threw an elk-hide over him and led you out."

"I followed you; I didn't look at Pierre; I left him lying there,"

gasped Joan.

Prosper went on monotonously. "When I came back a week later, I

thought he would be dead. It was dusk, the wind was blowing, the snow

was driving in a scud. I came down to the cabin and dropped below the

drift by that northern window, and, the second I looked in, I dropped

out of sight. There was a light and a fire. Your husband was lying

before the fire on a cot. There was another man there, your Mr.

Holliwell; they were talking, Holliwell was dressing Pierre's wound. I

went away like a ghost, and while I was going back, I thought it all

out; and I decided to keep you for myself. I suppose," said Prosper

dully, "that that was a horrible sin. I didn't see it that way then.

I'm not sure I see it that way now. Pierre had tied you up and pressed

a white-hot iron into your bare shoulder. If you went back to him, if

he took you back, how was I to know that he might not repeat his

drunken deviltry, or do worse, if anything could be worse! It was the

act of a fiend. It put him out of court with me. Whatever I gave you,

education and beauty, and ease, must be better and happier for you

than life with such a brute as Pierre--"

"Stop!" said Joan between her teeth; "you know nothing of Pierre and

me; you only know that one dreadful night. You don't know--the rest."

"I don't want to know the rest," he said sharply; "that is enough to

justify my action. I thought so then and I think so now. You won't be

able to make me change that opinion."

"I shall not try," said Joan.