While she pondered through the first sleepless nights in this strange

shelter of hers, and while the blizzard Prosper had counted on drove

bayoneted battalions of snow across the plains and forced them,

screaming like madmen, along the narrow cañon, Joan came slowly and

fully to a realization of the motive of Pierre's deed. He had been

jealous. He had thought that she was having dealings with another man.

She grew hot and shamed. It was her father's sin, that branding on her

shoulder, or, perhaps, going back farther, her mother's sin. Carver

had warned Pierre--of the hot and smothered heart--to beware of Joan's

"lookin' an' lookin' at another man." Now, in piteous woman fashion,

Joan went over and over her memories of Pierre's love, altering them

to fit her terrible experience. It was a different process from that

simple seeing of pictures in the fire from which she had been startled

by Pierre's return. A man's mind in her situation would have been

intensely occupied with thoughts of the new companion, but Joan,

thorough as a woman always is, had not yet caught up. She was still

held by all the strong mesh of her short married life. She had simply

not got as far as Prosper Gael. She accepted his hospitality vaguely,

himself even more vaguely. When she would be done with her passionate

grief, her laborious going-over of the past, her active and tormenting

anger with the lover whom Prosper had told her was dead, then it would

be time to study this other man. As for her future, she had no plans

at all. Joan's life came to her as it comes to a child, unsullied by

curiosity. At this time Prosper was infinitely the more curious, the

more excited of the two.




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