There were times, even now, when Prosper tried to argue himself back into sardonic self-possession. “Pooh!” said his brain, “you were beside yourself over a loss and then you were shut in for months of winter alone with this mountain girl, so naturally you are off your balance.” He would school himself while Joan shoveled outdoors. He would try to see her with critical, clear eyes when she strode in. But one look at her and he was bemused again. For now she was at a great height of beauty, vivid with growing strength and purpose, her lips calm and scarlet, her eyes bright and hopeful. In fact, Joan had made her plans. She would wait till spring, partly to get back her full strength, partly to make further progress in her studies, but mostly in order not to hurt this hospitable Prosper Gael. The naÏvetÉ of her gratitude, of her delicate consideration for his feelings, which continually triumphed over an instinctive fear, would have filled him with amusement, perhaps with compunction, had he been capable of understanding them. She was truly sorry that she had hurt him by running away. She told herself she would not do that again. In the spring she would make him a speech of thankfulness and of farewell, and then she would tramp back to Pierre’s homestead and win and hold Pierre’s land. As yet, you see, Prosper entered very little into her conscious life. Somewhere, far down in her, there was a disturbance, a growing doubt, a something vague and troubling.... Joan had not learnt to probe her own heart. A sensation was not, or it was. She was puzzled by the feeling Prosper was beginning to cause her, a feeling of miserable complexity; but she was not yet mentally equipped for the confronting of complexity. It was necessary for an emotion to rush at Joan and throw down, as it were, her heart before she recognized it; even then she might not give it a name. She would act, however, and with violence.

So now she planned and worked and grew beautiful with work and planning, while Prosper curbed his passion and worked, too, and his instruments were delicate and deadly and his plans made no account of hers. Every word he read to her, every note he played for her, had its calculated effect. He worked on her subconsciousness, undermining her path, and at nights and in her sleep she grew aware of him.

But even now, in his cool and passionate heart there were moments of reaction, one at last that came near to wrecking his purpose.

“Your clothes are about done for, Joan,” Prosper laughed one morning, watching her belt in her tattered shirt; “you’ll soon look like Cophetua’s beggar maid.”

“I’m not quite barefoot yet.” She held up a cracked boot.

“Joan—” He hesitated an instant, then got up from his desk, walked to a window, and looked out at the bright morning. The lake was ruffled with wind, the firs tossed, there were patches of brown-needled earth under his window; his eyes were startled by a strip of green where tiny yellow flowers trod on the very edge of the melting drift. The window was open to soft, tingling air that smelt of snow and of sun, of pines, of growing grass, of sap, of little leaf-buds. The birds were in loud chorus. For several minutes Prosper stared and listened.

“What is it, Mr. Gael?” asked Joan patiently.

He started. “Oh,” he said without looking at her again, “I was going to tell you that there are a skirt and a sort of coat in—in a closet in the hall. Do you want to use them?”

She went out to look. In five minutes—he had gone back to his work at the desk—he heard her laugh, and, still laughing, she opened the door again.

“Oh, Mr. Gael, were you really thinking that I could wear these? Look.”

He turned and looked at her. She had crowded her strong, lithe frame into a brown tweed suit, a world too narrow for her, and she was laughing heartily at herself and had come in to show him the misfit.

“These things, Mr. Gael,” she said,—“they must have been made for a tall child.”

Prosper had too far tempted his pain, and in her vivid phrase it came to life before him. She had painted a startling picture and he had seen that suit, so small and trim, before.

Joan saw his face grow white, his eyes stared through her. He drew a quick breath and winced away from her, hiding his face in his hands. A moment later he was weeping convulsively, with violence, his head down between his hands. Joan started toward him, but he made a wicked and repellent gesture. She fled into her room and sat, bewildered, on her bed.

All at once the question came to her: for whom had the delicate fabrics been bought, for whom had this suit been made? “It was his wife and she is dead,” thought Joan, and very pitifully she took off the suit, laid it and the other things away, and sitting by her window rested her chin in her hands and stared out through the blue pines. Tears ran down her face because she was so sorry for Prosper’s pain. And again, thought Joan, she had caused it, she who owed him everything. Yes, she was deeply sorry for Prosper, deeply; her whole heart was stirred. For the first time she had a longing to comfort him with her hands.

For all that day Prosper fled the house and went across the country, now fording a flood of melted snow, now floundering through a drift, now walking on springy sod, unaware of the soft spring, conscious only of a sort of fire in his breast. He suffered and he resented his suffering, and he would have killed his heart if, by so doing, he could have given it peace. And all day he did not once think of Joan, but only of the “tall child” for whom the gay caÑon refuge had been built, but who had never set her slim foot upon its threshold. Sunset found him miles away in the foothills of a low, many-folded range across the plain. He was dog tired, so that for very exhaustion his brain had stopped its tormenting work. He lit a fire and sat by it, huddled in his coat, smoking, dozing, not able really to sleep for cold and hunger. The bright stars, flung all about the sky, mildly regarded hum. Coyotes mourned their loneliness and hunger near and far, and once, in the broken woods above him, a mountain lion gave its blood-curdling scream. Prosper hated the night and its beautiful desolation, he hated the God that had made this land. He cursed the dawn when it came delicately, spreading a green arc of radiance across the east. And then, as he arose stiffly, stamped out his fire, and started slowly on his way back, he was conscious of a passionate homesickness, not for the old life he had lost, but for his cabin, his bright hearth, his shut-in solitude, his Joan. Very dear and real and human she was, and her laughter had been sweet. He had shocked it to silence, he had repulsed her comforting hands. She had been so innocent of any desire to hurt him. He could not imagine her ever hurting any one, this broad-browed Joan. She was so kind. And now she must be anxious about him. She would have sat up by the fire all night.... His eagerness for her slighted comfort gave his lagging steps a certain vigor, the long walk back seemed very long, indeed. Noon was hot, but he found water and by sundown he came to the caÑon trail. He wanted Joan as badly now as a hurt child wants its mother. He came, haggard and breathless, to the door, called “Joan,” came into the warm little room and found it empty. Wen Ho, to be sure, pattered to meet him.

“Mister Gael been gone a long time, velly long, all night. Wen Ho, he fix bed, fix breakfast—oh, the lady? She gone out yestiddy, not come back. She leave a letter for him, there on the table.”

Prosper took it, waved Wen Ho out, and, dropping into the big chair, opened the paper. There was Joan’s big handwriting, that he himself had taught her. Before she could only sign her name.

There were blistered spots above that pathetic, mistaken signature. The poor girl had meant to sign herself “Respectfully,” and somehow that half-broke his heart.

He drank the strong coffee Wen Ho brought for him, two great cups of it, and he ate a piece of broiled elk meat. Then he went out again and walked rapidly down the trail. It was not yet dark; the world was in a soft glow of rose and violet, opalescent lights. The birds were singing in a hundred chantries. And there, through the firs, a sight to stop his heart, Joan came walking toward him, graceful, free, a swinging figure, bareheaded, her rags girded beautifully about her. And up and up to him she came soundlessly over the pine needles and through the wet snow-patches, looking at him steadfastly and tenderly, without a smile. She came and stood before him, still without dropping her sad, grave look.

“Mr. Gael,” she said, “I hev come back. I got out yonder an’”—her breast heaved and a sort of terror came into her eyes—“an’ the world was awful lonely. There ain’t a creature out yonder to care fer me, fer me to care fer. It seemed like as if it was all dead. I couldn’t abear it.”

She put out her hand wistfully asking for pity, but he fell upon his knees and wrapped his hungry arms about her. “Joan,” he sobbed, “Joan! Don’t leave me. Don’t—I couldn’t bear it!” He looked up at her, his worn face wet with tears. “Don’t leave me, Joan! I want you. Don’t you understand?”

Her deep gray eyes filled slowly with light, she put a hand on either side of his face and bent her lips to his. “I never thought you’d be wantin’ me,” she said.