The Border Legion

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.