From that day Joan lived a life of seclusion in the small room.
Kells wanted it so, and Joan thought best for the time being not to
take advantage of Bate Wood's duplicity. Her meals were brought to
her by Wood, who was supposed to unlock and lock her door. But Wood
never turned the key in that padlock.
Prisoner though Joan was, the days and nights sped swiftly.
Kells was always up till late in the night and slept half of the
next morning. It was his wont to see Joan every day about noon. He
had a care for his appearance. When he came in he was dark,
forbidding, weary, and cold. Manifestly he came to her to get rid of
the imponderable burden of the present. He left it behind him. He
never spoke a word of Alder Creek, of gold, of the Border Legion.
Always he began by inquiring for her welfare, by asking what he
could do for her, what he could bring her. Joan had an abhorrence of
Keils in his absence that she never felt when he was with her; and
the reason must have been that she thought of him, remembered him as
the bandit, and saw him as another and growing character. Always
mindful of her influence, she was as companionable, as sympathetic,
as cheerful, and sweet as it was possible for her to be. Slowly he
would warm and change under her charm, and the grim gloom, the dark
strain, would pass from him. When that left he was indeed another
person. Frankly he told Joan that the glimpse of real love she had
simulated back there in Cabin Gulch was seldom out of his mind. No
woman had ever kissed him like she had. That kiss had transfigured
him. It haunted him. If he could not win kisses like that from
Joan's lips, of her own free will, then he wanted none. No other
woman's lips would ever touch his. And he begged Joan in the
terrible earnestness of a stern and hungering outcast for her love.
And Joan could only sadly shake her head and tell him she was sorry
for him, that the more she really believed he loved her the surer
she was that he would give her up. Then always he passionately
refused. He must have her to keep, to look at as his treasure, to
dream over, and hope against hope that she would love him some day.
Women sometimes learned to love their captors, he said; and if she
only learned, then he would take her away to Australia, to distant
lands. But most of all he begged her to show him again what it meant
to be loved by a good woman. And Joan, who knew that her power now
lay in her unattainableness, feigned a wavering reluctance, when in
truth any surrender was impossible. He left her with a spirit that
her presence gave him, in a kind of trance, radiant, yet with
mocking smile, as if he foresaw the overthrow of his soul through
her, and in the light of that his waning power over his Legion was
as nothing.