The Branding Iron

Joan waited for Holliwell and, waiting, began inevitably to regain her

strength. One evening as Wen Ho was spreading the table, Prosper

looked up from his writing to see a tall, gaunt girl clinging to the

door-jamb. She was dressed in the heavy clothes, which hung loose upon

her long bones, her throat was drawn up to support the sharpened and

hollowed face in which her eyes had grown very large and wistful. Her

hair was braided and wrapped across her brow, her long, strong hands,

smooth and only faintly brown, were thin, too, and curiously

expressive as they clung to the logs. She was a moving figure,

piteous, lovely, rather like some graceful mountain beast, its spirit

half-broken by wounds and imprisonment and human tending, but ready to

leap into a savagery of flight or of attack. They were wild, those

great eyes, as well as wistful. Prosper, looking suddenly up at them,

caught his breath. He put down his book as quietly as though she had

indeed been a wild, easily startled thing, and, suppressing the

impulse to rise, stayed where he was, leaning a trifle forward, his

hands on the arms of his chair.

Joan's eyes wandered curiously about the brilliant room and came to

him at last. Prosper met them, relaxed, and smiled.

"Come in and dine with me, Joan," he said. "Tell me how you like it."

She felt her way weakly to the second large chair and sat down facing

him across the hearth. The Chinaman's shadow, thrown strongly by the

lamp, ran to and fro between and across them. It was a strange scene

truly, and Prosper felt with exhilaration all its strangeness. This was

no Darby and Joan fireside; a wizard with his enchanted leopardess,

rather. He was half-afraid of Joan and of himself.

"It's right beautiful," said Joan, "an' right strange to me. I never

seen anything like it before. That"--her eyes followed Wen Ho's

departure half-fearfully--"that man and all."

Prosper laughed delightedly, stretching up his arms in full enjoyment

of her splendid ignorance. "The Chinaman? Does he look so strange to

you?"

"Is that what he is? I--I didn't know." She smiled rather sadly and

ashamedly. "I'm awful ignorant, Mr. Gael. I just can read an' I've

only read two books." She flushed and her pupils grew large.

Prosper saw that this matter of reading trod closely on her pain.

"Yes, he's a Chinaman from San Francisco. You know where that is."

"Yes, sir. I've heard talk of it--out on the Pacific Coast, a big

city."