"I want her. I mean to keep her or—break her." He turned his back to say this and went toward the window. Joan, fascinated, watched his fingers working into one another, tightening, crushing. "It's another man she wants," he said hoarsely, "and if I can prevent it, she shall not have him. I will force her to keep her vows to me—force her. If it kills her, I'll break this passion, this fancy. I'll have her back—" He wheeled round, showing a twitching face. "I'll prove her infidelity whether she's been unfaithful or not, and then I'll take her back, after the world has given her one of its names—"

"You don't love her," said Joan, very white. "You want to brand her."

"By God!" swore the Jew, "and I will brand her. I'll brand her."

He fumbled in his pocket and brought out the small envelope Woodward Kane had handed to him the day before. He stood turning the letter about in his hands as though some such meaningless occupation was a necessity to him. Joan's eyes, falling upon the letter, widened and fixed.

"She has written to me," said Jasper. "She wants her liberty. She wants it in such a way that she will fly clear and I—yes, and you, too, will be left in the mud. There's a man somewhere, of course. She thinks she has evidence, witnesses against me. I don't know what rubbish she has got together. But I'm going to fight her. I'm going to win. I'll save you if I can, Jane; if not, of course I am at your service for any amends—"

He stopped in his halting speech, for Joan had stood up and was moving across the room, her eyes fastened on the letter in his hands. She had the air of a sleep-walker.

She opened a drawer of her desk, took out an old tin box, once used for tobacco, and drew forth a small, gray envelope torn in two. Then she came back to him and said, "Let me see that letter," and he obeyed as though she had the right to ask.

She took his letter and hers and compared the two, the small, gray squares lying unopened on her knee, and she spoke incomprehensibly.

"Betty is 'the tall child,'" she said, and laughed with a catch in her breath.

Jasper looked at the envelopes. They were identical; Betty's gray note-paper crossed by Betty's angular, upright hand, very bold, very black. The torn envelope was addressed to Prosper Gael. Jasper took it, opened each half, laid the parts together, and read:

Jasper is dying. By the time you get this he will be dead. If you can forgive me for having failed you in courage last year, come back. What I have been to you before I will be again, only, this time, we can love openly. Come back.

"Jane,"—Morena spoke brokenly,—"what does it mean?"

"He built that cabin in Wyoming for her," said Joan, speaking as though Jasper had seen the canyon hiding-place and known its history, "and she didn't come. He brought me there on his sled. I was hurt. I was terribly hurt. He took care of me—"

"Prosper?" Jasper thrust in. His face was drawn with excitement.

"Yes. Prosper Gael. I was there with him for months. At first I wasn't strong enough to go away, and then, after a while, I tried. But I was too lonely and sorrowful. In the spring I loved him. I thought I loved him. He wanted me. I was all alone in the world. I didn't know that he loved another woman. I thought she was dead—like Pierre. Prosper had clothes for her there. I suppose—I've thought it out since—that she was to leave as if for a short journey, and then secretly go on that long one, and she couldn't take many things with her. So he had beautiful stuffs for her—and a little suit to wear in the snow. That's how I came to call her 'the tall child,' seeing that little suit, long and narrow.... This letter came one morning, one awfully bright morning. He read it and went out and the next day he went away. Afterwards I found the letter torn in two beside his desk on the floor. I took it and I've always kept it. 'The tall child'! He looked so terrible when I called her that.... And she was your Betty all the time!"

"Yes," said Morena slowly. "She was my Betty all the time." He gave her a twisted smile and put the two papers carefully into an inside pocket. "I am going to keep this letter, Jane. Truly the ways of the Lord are past finding out."

Joan looked at him in growing uneasiness. Her mind, never quick to take in all the bearings and the consequences of her acts, was beginning to work. "What are you going to do with it, Mr. Morena? I don't want you to do Betty a hurt. She must have loved Prosper Gael. Perhaps she still loves him."

This odd appeal drew another difficult smile from Betty's husband. "Quite obviously she still loves him, Jane. She is divorcing me so that she can marry him."

"But, Mr. Morena, I don't believe he will marry her now. He is tired of her. He is that kind of lover. He gets tired. Now he would like to marry me. He told me so. Perhaps—if Betty knew that—she might come back to you, without your branding her."

Jasper was startled out of his vengeful stillness.

"Prosper Gael wants to marry you? He has told you so?"

"Yes." She was sad and humbled. "Now he wants to marry me and once he told me things about marrying. He said"—Joan quoted slowly, her eyes half-closed in Prosper's manner, her voice a musical echo of his thin, vibrant tone—"'It's man's most studied insult to woman.'"

"Yes. That's Prosper," murmured Jasper.

"I wouldn't marry him, Mr. Morena, even if I could—not if I were to be—burnt for refusing him."

Jasper looked probingly at her, a new speculation in his eyes. She had begun to fit definitely into his plans. It seemed there might be a way to frustrate Betty and to keep a hold upon his valuable protegee. "Are you so sure of that, Jane?"

"Ah!" she answered; "you doubt it because I once thought I loved him? But you don't know all about me...."

He stood silent, busy with his weaving. At last he looked at her rather blankly, impersonally. Joan was conscious of a frightened, lonely chill. She put out her hand uncertainly, a wrinkle appearing sharp and deep between her eyes.

"Mr. Morena, please—I haven't any one but you. I don't understand very well what this divorcing rightly means. Nor what they will do to me. Will you be thinking of me a little? I wouldn't ask it, for I know you are unhappy and bothered enough, but, you see—"

He did not notice the hand. "It will come out right, Jane. Don't worry," he said with absent gentleness. "Keep your mind on your work. I'll look out for your best interests. Be sure of that." He came near to her, his hat in his hand, ready to go. "Try to forget all about it, will you?"

"Oh, I can't do that. I feel sort of—burnt. Betty thinking—that! But I'll do my work just the same, of course."

She sighed heavily and sat, the unnoticed hand clasped in its fellow.

When he had gone she called nervously for her maid. She had a hitherto unknown dread of being alone. But when Mathilde, chosen by Betty, came with her furtive step and treacherous eyes, Joan invented some duty for her. It occurred to her that Mathilde might be one of Betty's witnesses. For some time the girl's watchfulness and intrusions had become irritatingly noticeable. And Morena was Joan's only frequent and informal visitor.

"Mathilde thinks I am—that!" Joan said to herself; and afterwards, with a burst of weeping, "And, of course, that is what I am." Her past sin pressed upon her and she trembled, remembering Pierre's wistful, seeking face. If he should find her now, he would find her branded, indeed—now he could never believe that she had indeed been innocent of guilt in the matter of Holliwell. Her father had first put a mark upon her. Since then the world had only deepened his revenge.

There followed a sleepless, dry, and aching night.



CHAPTER X

THE SPIDER

"Hullo. Is this Mrs. Morena?"

Betty held the receiver languidly. Her face had grown very thin and her eyes were patient. They were staring now absently through the front window of Woodward Kane's sitting-room at a day of driving April rain.

"Yes. This is Mrs. Morena."

The next speech changed her into a flushed and palpitating girl.

"Mr. Gael wishes to know, madam,"—the man-servant recited his lesson automatically,—"if you have seen the exhibition of Foster's water-colors, Fifty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue. He wants to know if you will be there this afternoon at five o'clock. No. 88 in the inner room is the picture he would especially like you to notice, madam."

Betty's hand and voice were trembling.

"No. I haven't seen it." She hesitated, looking at the downpour. "Tell him, please, that I will be there."

Her voice trailed off doubtfully.

The man at the other end clipped out a "Very well, madam," and hung up.

Betty was puzzled. Why had Prosper sent her this message, made this appointment by his servant? Perhaps because he was afraid that, in her exaggerated caution, she might refuse to meet him if she could explain to him the reason for her refusal, or gauge the importance of his request. With a servant she could do neither, and the very uncertainty would force her to accept. It was a dreadful day. Nobody would be out, certainly not at the tea-hour, to look at Foster's pictures—an insignificant exhibition. Betty felt triumphant. At last, this far too acquiescent lover had rebelled against her decree of silence and separation.

At five o'clock she stepped out of her taxicab, made a run for shelter, and found herself in the empty exhibition rooms. She checked her wrap and her umbrella, took a catalogue from the little table, chatted for a moment with the man in charge, then moved about, looking carelessly at the pictures. No. 88 in the inner room! Her heart was beating violently, the hand in her muff was cold. She went slowly toward the inner room and saw at once that, under a small canvas at its far end, Prosper stood waiting for her.

He waited even after he had seen her smile and quickening step, and when he did come forward, it was with obvious reluctance. Betty's smile faded. His face was haggard and grim, unlike itself; his eyes lack-luster as she had never seen them. This was not the face of an impatient lover. It was—she would not name it, but she was conscious of a feeling of angry sickness.

He took her hand and forced a smile.

"Betty, I thought you disapproved of this kind of thing. I think, myself, it's rather imprudent to arrange a meeting through your maid."

Betty jerked away her hand, drew a sharp breath. "What do you mean? I didn't arrange this meeting. It was you—your man."

They became simultaneously aware of a trap. It had sprung upon them. With the look of trapped things, they stared at each other, and Betty instinctively looked back over her shoulder. There stood Jasper in the doorway of the room. He looked like the most casual of visitors to an art-gallery, he carried a catalogue in his hand. When he saw that he was seen he smiled easily and came over to them.

"You will have to forgive me," he murmured pleasantly; "you see, it was necessary to see you both together and Betty is not willing to allow me an interview. I am sorry to have chosen a public place and to have used a trick to get you here, but I could not think of any other plan. This is really private enough. I have arranged this exhibition for Foster and it is closed to the public to-day. We got in by special permit—a fact you probably missed. And, after all, civilized people ought to be able to talk about anything without excitement."

Betty's eyes glared at him. "I will not stay! This is insufferable!"

But he put out his hand and something in his gesture compelled her. She sat down on the round, plush seat in the middle of the room and looked up at the two men helplessly. Joan had once leaned in a doorway, silent and unconsulted, while two men, her father and Pierre, settled their property rights in her. Betty was, after all, in no better case. She listened, whiter and whiter, till at the last she slowly raised her muff and pressed it against her twisted mouth.

Morena stood with his hand resting on the high back of the circular seat almost directly above Betty's head. It seemed to hold her there like a bar. But it was at Prosper he looked, to Prosper he spoke. "My friend," he began, and the accentuation of the Hebraic quality of his voice had an instantaneous effect upon his two listeners. Both Prosper and Betty knew he was master of some intense agitation. They were conscious of an increasing rapidity of their pulses. "My friend, I thought that I knew you fairly well, as one man knows another, but I find that there have been certain limits to my knowledge. How extraordinary it is! This inner world of our own lives which we keep closely to ourselves! I have a friend, yes, a very good friend, a very dear friend,"—the ironic insistence upon this word gave Prosper the shock of a repeated blow,—"and I fancy, in the ignorance of my conceit, that this friend's life is sufficiently open to my understanding. I see him leave college, I see him go out on various adventures. I share with him, by letters and confidences, the excitement of these adventures. I know with regret that he suffers from ill-health and goes West, and there, with a great deal of sympathy, I imagine him living, drearily enough, in some small, health-giving Western town, writing his book and later his play which he has so generously allowed me to produce."

"What the devil are you after, Jasper?"

"But I do my friend an injustice," went on the manager, undiverted. "His career is infinitely more romantic. He has built himself a little log house amongst the mountains, and he has decorated it and laid in a supply of dainty and exquisite stuffs. I believe that there is even an outing suit, small and narrow—"

"My God!" said Prosper, very low.

There was a silence. Jasper moved slightly, and Prosper started, but the Jew stayed in his former place, only that he bent his head a little, half-closed his eyes, and marked time with the hand that was not buried in the plush above Betty's head. He recited in a heavy voice, and it was here that Betty raised her muff!

Jasper is dying. By the time you get this letter he will be dead. If you can forgive me for having failed in courage last year, come back. What I have been to you before, I will be to you again, only this time we can love openly. Come back.

"I am going mad!" said Prosper harshly, and indeed his face had a pinched, half-crazy look.

The Jew waved his hand. "Oh, no, no, no. It is only that you are making a discovery. Letters should be burnt, my friend, not torn and thrown away, but burnt." He stood up to his stateliest height and he made a curious and rather terrible gesture of breaking something between his two hands. "I have this letter and I hold you and Betty—so!" he said softly—"so!"

Betty spoke. "I might have told you that I loved him, that I have loved him for years, Jasper. If you use this evidence, if you bring this counter-suit, it will bring about the same, the very same, result. Prosper and I—" She broke off choking.

"Of course. Betty and I will be married at once, as soon as she gets her divorce, or you get yours." But Prosper's voice was hollow and strained.

"You will be married, Betty," went on Jasper as calmly as before; "you, branded in the eyes of the world as an unfaithful wife, will be married to a man who has ceased to love you."

"That is not true," said Betty.

"Look at his face, my dear. Look at it carefully. Now, watch it closely. Prosper Gael, if I should tell that with a little patience, a little skill, a little unselfishness, you could win a certain woman who once loved you—eh?—a certain Jane West, could you bring yourself to marry this discarded wife of mine?"

Betty sprang up and caught Prosper's arm in her small hand.

"He is tired of you, Betty. He loves Jane West." Jasper laughed shortly, looking at the tableau they made: Prosper white, caught in the teeth of honor, his face set to hide its secret, Betty reading his eyes, his soul.

"I am entirely yours, in your hands," said Prosper Gael.

Betty shook his arm and let it go. "You are lying. You love the woman. Do you think I can't see?"

"It will be a very strange divorce suit," went on Jasper. "Your lawyers, Betty, will perhaps prove your case. My lawyers will certainly prove mine, and, when we find ourselves free, our—our lovers will then unite in holy matrimony—rather an original outcome."

"Will you go, Prosper?" asked Betty. It was a command.

He saw that, at that moment, his presence was intolerable to her.

"Of course. If you wish it. Jasper, you know where to find me, and, Betty,"—he turned to her with a weary tenderness,—"forgive me and make use of me, if you will, as you will."

He went out quickly, feeling himself a coward to leave her, knowing that he would be a coward to stay to watch the anguish of her broken heart and pride. For an instant he did hesitate and look back. They were standing together, calmly, man and wife. What could he do to help them, he that had broken their lives?

Betty turned to Jasper, still with the muff before her mouth, looking at him above it with her wide, childlike, desperate eyes.

"What do you get out of this, Jasper? I will go to Woodward. I will never come back to you.... Is it revenge?"

"If so," said Jasper, "it isn't yet complete. Betty, you have been rash to pit yourself against me. You must have known that I would break you utterly. I will break you, my dear, and I will have you back, and I will be your master instead of your servant, and I will love you—"

"You must be mad. I'm afraid of you. Please let me go."

"In a moment, when you have learned what home you have to go to. This morning I had an interview with your brother in his office, and he wrote this letter that I have in my pocket and asked me to give it to you."

Betty laid down her muff, showing at last the pale and twisted mouth. Jasper watched her read her brother's letter, and his eyes were as patient and observant as the eyes of a skillful doctor who has given a dangerous but necessary draught.

Betty read the small, sharp, careful writing, very familiar to her.

I have instructed your maid to pack your things and to return at once to your husband's house. He is a much too merciful man. You have treated him shamelessly. I can find no excuse for you. My house is definitely closed to you. I will send you no money, allow you no support, countenance you in no way. This is final. You have only one course, to return humbly and with penitence to your husband, submit yourself to him, and learn to love and honor and obey him as he deserves. The evidence of your guilt is incontrovertible. I utterly disbelieve your story against him. It is part of your sin, and it is easily to be explained in the light of my present knowledge of your real character. Whether you return to Morena or not, I emphatically reassert that I will not see you or speak to you again. You are to my mind a woman of shameless life, such a woman as I should feel justified in turning out of any decent household.

Woodward Kane

The room turned giddily about Betty. She saw the whole roaring city turn about her, and she knew that there was no home in it for her. She could go to Prosper Gael, but at what horrible sacrifice of pride, and, if Jasper now refused to bring suit, could she ask this man, who no longer loved her, to keep her as his mistress? What could she do? Where could she turn? How could she keep herself alive? For the first time, life, stripped of everything but its hard and ugly bones, faced her. She had always been sheltered, been dependent, been loved. Once before she had lost courage and had failed to venture beyond the familiar shelter of custom and convention. Now, she was again most horribly afraid. Anything was better than this feeling of being lost, alone. She looked at Jasper. At that moment he was nothing but a protector, a means of life, and he knew it.

"Will you come home with me now?" he asked her bitterly.

Betty forced the twisted mouth to speech. "What else is there for me to do?" she said.



CHAPTER XI

THE CLEAN WILD THING

"The Reverend Francis Holliwell." Morena turned the card over and over in his hand. "Holliwell. Holliwell. Frank Holliwell." Yes. One of the fellows that had dropped out. Big, athletic youngster; left college in his junior year and studied for the ministry. Fine chap. Popular. Especially decent to him when he had begun to play that difficult role of a man without a country. Now here was the card of the Reverend Francis Holliwell and the man himself, no doubt, waiting below. Jasper tried to remember. He'd heard something about Frank. Oh, yes. The young clergyman had given up a fashionable parish in the East—small Norman church, wealthy parishioners, splendid stipend, beautiful stone Norman rectory—thrown it all up to go West on some unheard-of mission in the sagebrush. He was back now, probably for money, donations wanted for a building, church or hospital or library. Jasper in imagination wrote out a generous check. Before going down he glanced at the card again and noticed some lines across the back:

This is to introduce one of my best friends, Pierre Landis, of Wyoming. Please be of service to him. His mission has and deserves to have my full sympathy.

So, after all, it wasn't Holliwell below and the check-book would not be needed. "Pierre Landis, of Wyoming." Jasper went down the stairs and on the way he remembered a letter received from Yarnall a long time before. He remembered it with an accession of alarm. "I've probably let hell loose for your protegee, Jane; given your address, and incidentally hers, to a fellow who wants her pretty badly. His name's Pierre Landis. You're a pretty good judge of white men. Size him up and do what's best for Jane."

For some time after receiving this letter, Jasper had expected the appearance of this Pierre Landis, then had forgotten him. The fellow who wanted Jane so badly had been a long while on his way to her. Remembering and wondering, the manager opened the crimson curtains and stepped into the presence of Pierre.

Even if he had had no foreknowledge, Jasper felt that, at sight of his visitor, his fancy would have jumped to Joan. It was the eyes; he had seen no others but hers like them for clarity; far-seeing, grave eyes that held a curious depth of light. Here was one of Joan's kindred, one of the clean, wild things.

Then came the gentle Western drawl. "I'm right sorry to trouble you, Mr. Morena."

Jasper took a brown hand that had the feel of iron. The man's face, on a level with Jasper's, was very brown and lean. It had a worn look, a trifle desperate, perhaps, in the lines of lip and the expression of the smoke-colored eyes. Jasper, sensitive to undercurrents, became aware that he stood in some fashion for a forlorn hope in the life of this Pierre. At the same time the manager remembered a confidence of Jane's. She had been "afraid of some one." She had been running away. There was one that mustn't find her, and to run away from him, that was the business of her life. Pierre Landis was this "one," the something wild and clean that had at last come searching even into this city. It was necessary that Jane's present protector should be very careful. There must be no running away this time, and Pierre must be warned off. Jasper had plans of his own for his star player. For one thing she must draw Prosper Gael completely out of Betty's life.

Jasper made his guest comfortable, sat opposite to him, and lighted a cigarette. Although Pierre had accepted one, he did not smoke. He was far too disturbed.

"Frank Holliwell gave me a note to you, Mr. Morena. I got your address some years ago from Yarnall, of Lazy-Y Ranch, Middle Fork, Wyoming. I've been gettin' my affairs into shape ever since, so that I could come East. I don't rightly know whether Yarnall would have wrote to you concernin' me or no."

"Yes. He did write—just a line—two years ago."

Pierre studied his own long, brown hands, turning the soft hat between them. When he lifted his eyes, they were intensely blue. It was as though blue fire had consumed the smoke.

"I've been takin' after a girl. She was called Jane on Yarnall's ranch an' she was cook there for the outfit. Nobody knowed her story nor her name. She left the mornin' I came in an' I didn't set eyes on her. You were takin' her East to teach her to play-act for you. I don't know whether you done so or not, but I've come here to learn where she is so that I can find out if she's the woman I'm lookin' for."

Morena smiled kindly. "You've come a long way, Mr. Landis, on an uncertainty."

"Yes, sir." Pierre did not smile. He was holding himself steady. "But I'm used to uncertainty. There ain't no uncertainty that can keep me from seekin' after the person I want." He paused, the eyes still fixed upon Morena, who, uncomfortable under them, veiled himself thinly in cigarette smoke. "I want to see this Jane," Pierre ended gently.

"Nothing easier, Landis. I'll give you a ticket to 'The Leopardess.' She is acting the title part. She is my leading lady and a very extraordinary young actress. Of course, it's none of my business, but in a way I am Miss West's guardian—"

"Miss West?"

"Yes. That is Jane's name—Jane West. You think it is an assumed one?"

Pierre stood up. "I'm not thinkin' on this trip," he said; "I'm hopin'."

"I am sorry, but I am afraid you're on the wrong track. There may be a resemblance, there may even be a marked resemblance, between Miss West and the person you want to find, but—again please forgive me—I am in the place of guardian to her at present and I should like to know something of your business, enough of it, that is, to be sure that your sudden appearance, if you happen to be right in your surmise, won't frighten my leading lady out of her wits and send her off to Kalamazoo on the next train."

Pierre evidently resented the fashion of this speech. "I'm sorry," he said with dignity, "not to be able to tell you anything. I'll be careful not to frighten Miss West. I can see her first from a distance an' then—"

"Certainly. Certainly."

Jasper rang and directed his man to get an envelope from an upstairs table. When it came, he handed it to Pierre.

"That is a ticket for to-morrow night's performance. It's the best seat I can give you, though it is not very near the stage. However, you will certainly be able to recognize your—Jane, if she is your Jane."

Pierre pocketed the ticket. "Thank you," he murmured. His face was expressionless.

Jasper was making rapid plans. "Oh, by the way," he said hurriedly, "if you should stand near the stage exit to-night, say at about twelve o'clock, you could see Miss West come out and get into her motor. That would give you a fairly close view. But even if you find you are mistaken, Landis, be sure to see 'The Leopardess.' It's well worth your while. You're going? Won't you dine with me to-night?"

"No, thank you. I wouldn't be carin' to to-night. I—I reckon I've got this matter too much on my mind. Thank you very much, Mr. Morena."

"Before you go, tell me about Holliwell. He was a good friend of mine."

"He was a good friend to most every one he knowed. He was more than that to me."

"Then he's been a success out there?"

Pierre meditated over the words. "Success? Why, yes, I reckon he's been all of that."

"A difficult mission, isn't it? Trying to bring you fellows to God?"

Pierre smiled. "I reckon we get closer to God out there than you do here. We sure get the fear of Him even if we don't get nothin' else. When you fight winter an' all outdoors an' come near to death with hosses an' what-not, why, I guess you're gettin' close to somethin' not quite to be explained. Holliwell, he's a first-class sin-buster, best I ever knowed."

Morena laughed. He was beginning to enjoy his visitor. "Sin-buster?"

"That's one name fer a parson. Well, sir, I guess Holliwell is plumb close to bein' a prize devil-twister."

"Tell me how you first met him. It ought to be a good story."

But the young man's face grew bleak at this. "It ain't a good story, sir," he said grimly. "It ain't anything like that. I must wish you good-by, an' thank you kindly."

"But you'll let me see you again? Where are you stopping? Holliwell's friends are mine."

Pierre gave him the address of a small, downtown hotel, thanked him again, and, standing in the hall, added, "If I'm wrong in the notion that brought me to New York, I'll be goin' back again to my ranch, Mr. Morena. I'm goin' back to ranchin' on the old homestead. I've got it fixed up." He seemed to look through Jasper into an enormous distance. Morena was almost uncannily aware of the long, long journey by which this man's spirit had trodden, of the desert he faced ahead of him if the search must fail. Was it wrong to warn Jane? Ought this man to be given his chance? Surely here stood before him Jane's mate. Jasper wished that he knew more of the history back of Pierre and the girl. A man could do little but look out for his own interests, when he worked in the dark. Which would be the better man for Jane?—this Jane so trained, so educated, so far removed superficially from the ungrammatical, bronzed, clumsily dressed, graceful visitor. In every worldly respect, doubtless, Prosper Gael. Only—there were Pierre's eyes and the soul looking out of them.

Jasper said good-bye half-absently.

An hour later he went to call on Jane.

He found her done up in an apron and a dust-cap cleaning house with astonishing spirit. She and the Bridget, who had recently been substituted for Mathilde, were merry. Bridget was sitting on the sill, her upper half shut out, her round, brick-colored face laughing through the pane she was polishing. Jane was up a ladder, dusting books.

She came down to greet Morena, and he saw regretfully the sad change in her face and bearing which his arrival caused. Bridget was sent to the kitchen. Jane made apologies, and sitting on the ladder step she looked up at him with the look of some one who expects a blow.

"What is it now, Mr. Morena? Have the lawyers begun to—"

He had purposely kept her in the dark, purposely neglected her, left her to loneliness, in the hope of furthering the purposes of Prosper Gael.

"I haven't come to discuss that, Jane. Soon I hope to have good news for you. But to-day I've come to give you a hint—a warning, in fact—to prepare you for what I am sure will be a shock."

"Yes?" She was flushed and breathing fast. Her fingers were busy with the feather-duster on her knee and her eyes were still waiting.

"I had a visitor this morning—Pierre Landis, of Wyoming."

She rose, came to him, and clutched his arm. "Pierre? Pierre?" She looked around her, wild as a captured bird. "Oh, I must go! I must go!"

"Jane, my child,"—he put his arm about her, held her two hands in his,—"you must do nothing of the kind. If you don't want this Pierre to find you, if you don't want him to come into your life, there's an easy, a very simple, way to put an end to his pursuit. Don't you know that?"

She stared up at him, quivering in his arm. "No. What is it? How can I? Oh, he mustn't see me! Never, never, never! I made that promise to myself."

"Jane, you say yourself that you are changed, that you are not the girl he wants to find."

She shook her head desolately enough. "Oh, no, I'm not."

"He isn't sure that Jane West is the woman he's looking for. He's following the faintest, the most doubtful, of trails. He heard of you from Yarnall; the description of you and your sudden flight made him fairly sure that it must be—you—" Jasper laughed. "I'm talking quite at random in a sense, because I haven't a notion, my dear, who you are nor what this Pierre has been in your life. If you could tell me—?"

She shook her head. "No," she said; "no."

"Very well. Then I'll have to go on talking at random. Jane at the Lazy-Y Ranch was a woman who had deliberately disguised herself. Jane West in New York is a different woman altogether; but, unless I'm very wrong, she is even more completely disguised from Pierre Landis. If you can convince Pierre that you are Jane West, not any other woman, certainly not the woman he once knew, aren't you pretty safely rid of him for always?"

She stood still now. He felt that her fingers were cold. "Yes. For always. I suppose so. But how can I do that, Mr. Morena?"

"Nothing easier. You're an actress, aren't you? I advised Pierre Landis to stand near the stage exit to-night and watch you get into your motor."

Again she clutched at him. "Oh, no. Don't—don't let him do that!"

"Now, if you will make an effort, look him in the eyes, refuse to show a single quiver of recognition, speak to some one in the most artificial tone you can manage, pass him by, and drive away, why, wouldn't that convince him that you aren't his quarry—eh?"

She thought! then slowly drew herself away and stood, her head bent, her brows drawn sharply together. "Yes. I suppose so. I think I can do it. That is the best plan." She looked at him wildly again. "Then it will be over for always, won't it? He'll go away?"

"Yes, my poor child. He will go away. He told me so. Then, will you try to forget him, to live your life for its own beautiful sake? I'd like to see you happy, Jane."

"Would you?" She smiled like a pitying mother. "Why, I've given up even dreaming of that. That isn't what keeps me going."

"What is it, then, Jane?"

"Oh, a queer notion." She laughed sadly. "A kind of kid's notion, I guess, that if you live along, some way, some time, you'll be able to make up for things you've done, and that perhaps there'll be another meeting-place—a kind of a round-up—where you'll be fit to forgive those you love and to be forgiven by them."

Jasper walked about. He was touched and troubled. Some minutes later he said doubtfully, "Then you'll carry through your purpose of not letting Pierre know you?"

"Yes. I've made up my mind to that. That's what I've got to do. He mustn't find me. We can't meet here in this life. That's certain. There are things that come between, things like bars." She made a strange gesture as of a prisoner running his fingers across the barred window of a cell. "Thank you for warning me. Thank you for telling me what to do." She smiled faintly. "I think he will know me, anyway," she said, "but I won't know him. Never! Never!"

That night the theater was late in emptying itself. Jane West had acted with especial brilliance and she was called out again and again. When she came to her dressing-room she was flushed and breathless. She did not change her costume, but drew her fur coat on over the green evening dress she had worn in the last scene. Then she stood before her mirror, looking herself over carefully, critically. Now that the paint was washed off, and the flush of excitement faded, she looked haggard and white. Her face was very thin, its beautiful bones—long sweep of jaw, wide brow, straight, short nose—sharply accentuated. The round throat rising against the fur collar looked unnaturally white and long. She sat down before her dressing-table and deliberately painted her cheeks and lips. She even altered the outlines of her mouth, giving it a pursed and doll-like expression, so that her eyes appeared enormous and her nose a little pinched. Then she drew a lock of waved hair down across the middle of her forehead, pressed another at each side close to the corners of her eyes. This took from the unusual breadth of brow and gave her a much more ordinary look. A coat of powder, heavily applied, more nearly produced the effect of a pink-and-white, glassy-eyed doll-baby for which she was trying. Afterwards she turned and smiled doubtfully at the astonished dresser.

"Good gracious, Miss West! You don't look like yourself at all!"

"Good!"

She said good-night and went rapidly down the draughty passages and the concrete stairs. Jasper was standing inside the outer door and applauded her.

"Well done. If it weren't for your pose and walk, my dear, I should hardly have known you myself."

Joan stood beside him, holding her furs close, breathing fast through the parted, painted lips.

"Is he here, do you know?"

"Yes. He's been waiting. I told him you might be late. Now, keep your head. Everything depends upon that. Can you do it?"

"Oh, yes. Is the car there? I won't have to stop?"

"Not an instant. But give him a good looking-over so that he'll be sure, and don't change the expression of your eyes. Feel, make yourself feel inside, that he's a stranger. You know what I mean. Good-night, my dear. Good luck. I'll call you up as soon as you get home—that is, after I've seen your pursuer safely back to his rooms." But this last sentence was addressed to himself.

Joan opened the door and stepped out into the chill dampness of the April night. The white arc of electric light beat down upon her as she came forward and it fell as glaringly upon the figure of Pierre. He had pushed forward from the little crowd of nondescripts always waiting at a stage exit, and stood, bareheaded, just at the door of her motor drawn up by the curb. She saw him instantly and from the first their eyes met. It was a horrible moment for Joan. What it was for him, she could tell by the tense pallor of his keen, bronzed face. The eyes she had not seen for such an agony of years, the strange, deep, iris-colored eyes, there they were now searching her. She stopped her heart in its beating, she stopped her breath, stopped her brain. She became for those few seconds just one thought—"I have never seen you. I have never seen you." She passed so close to him that her fur touched his hand, and she looked into his face with a cool, half-disdainful glitter of a smile.

"Step aside, please," she said; "I must get in." Her voice was unnaturally high and quite unnaturally precise.

Pierre said one word, a hopeless word. "Joan." It was a prayer. It should have been, "Be Joan." Then he stepped back and she stumbled into shelter.

At the same instant another man—a man in evening dress—hastily prevented her man from closing the door.

"Miss West, may I see you home?"

Before she could speak, could do more than look, Prosper Gael had jumped in, the door slammed, the car began its whirr, and they were gliding through the crowded, brilliant streets.

Joan had bent forward and was rocking to and fro.

"He called me 'Joan,'" she gasped over and over. "He called me 'Joan.'"

"That was Pierre?" Prosper had been forewarned by Jasper and had planned his part.

She kept on rocking, holding her hands on either side of her face.

"I must go away. If I see him again I shall die. I could never do that another time. O God! His hand touched me. He called me 'Joan' ... I must go...."

Prosper did not touch her, but his voice, very friendly, very calm, had an instantaneous effect. "I will take you away."

She laughed shakily. "Again?" she asked, and shamed him into silence.

But after a while he began very reasonably, very patiently:

"I can take you away so that you need not be put through this unnecessary pain. I can arrange it with Morena. If Pierre sees you often enough, he will be sure to recognize you. Joan, I did not deserve that 'again' and you know it. I am a changed man. If you don't know that now I have the heart of—of devotion, of service, toward you, you are indeed a blind and stupid woman. But you do know it. You must."

She sat silent beside him, the long and slender hand between her face and him.

"I can take you away," he went on presently, "and keep you from Pierre until he has given up his search and has gone West again. And I can take you at once—in a day or two. Your understudy can fill the part. This engagement is almost at an end. I can make it up to Morena. After all, if we go, we shall be doing Betty and him a service."

Joan flung out her hands recklessly. "Oh," she cried, "what does it matter? Of course I'll go. I'd run into the sea to escape Pierre—" She leaned back against the cushioned seat, rolled her head a little from side to side like a person in pain. "Take me away," she repeated. "I believe that if I stay I shall go mad. I'll go anywhere—with any one. Only take me away."



CHAPTER XII

THE LEOPARDESS

Pierre stood before the cheap bureau of his ugly hotel bedroom turning a red slip of cardboard about in his fingers. The gas-jet sputtering above his head threw heavy shadows down on his face. It was the face of hopeless, heartsick youth, the muscles sagging, the eyes dull, the lips tight and pale. Since last night when the contemptuous glitter of Joan's smile had fallen upon him, he had neither slept nor eaten. Jasper had joined him at the theater exit, had walked home with him, and, while he was with the manager, Pierre's pride and reserve had held him up. Afterwards he had ranged the city like a prairie wolf, ranged it as though it had been an unpeopled desert, free to his stride. He had fixed his eyes above and beyond and walked alone in pain.

Dawn found him again in his room. What hope had sustained him, what memory of Joan, what purpose of tenderness toward her—these hopes and memories and purposes now choked and twisted him. He might have found her, his "gel," his Joan, with her dumb, loving gaze; he might have told her the story of his sorrow in such a way that she, who forgave so easily, would have forgiven even him, and he might have comforted her, holding her so and so, showing her utterly the true, unchanged, greatly changed love of his chastened heart. This girl, this love of his, whom, in his drunken, jealous madness, he had branded and driven away, he would have brought her back and tended her and made it up to her in a thousand, in ten thousand, ways. Pierre knelt by his bed, his black head buried in the cover, his arms bent above it, his hands clenched. Out there he had never lost hope of finding her, but here, in this peopled loneliness, with a memory of that woman's heartless smile, he did at last despair. In a strange, torturing way she had been like Joan. His heart had jumped to his mouth at first sight of her. And just there, to his shoulder where her head reached, had Joan's dear black head reached too. Pierre groaned aloud. The picture of her was so vivid. Not in months had the reality of his "gel" come so close to his imagination. He could feel her—feel her! O God!

That was the sort of night he had spent and the next day he passed in a lethargy. He had no heart to face the future now that the great purpose of his life had failed. Holliwell's God of comfort and forgiveness forsook him. What did he want with a God when that one comrade of his lonely, young, human life was out there lost by his own cruelty! Perhaps she was dead. Perhaps the wound had killed her. For all these years she might have been lying dead somewhere in the snow, under the sky. Sharp periods of pain followed dull periods of stupor. Now it was night again and a recollection of Jasper's theater ticket had dragged him to a vague purpose. He wanted to see again that woman who had so vivified his memory of Joan. It would be hateful to see her again, but he wanted the pain. He dressed and groomed himself carefully. Then, feeling a little faint, he went out into the clattering, glaring night.

Pierre's experience of theater-going was exceedingly small. He had never been in so large a play-house as this one of Morena's; he had never seen so large and well-dressed an audience; never heard a full and well-trained orchestra. In spite of himself, he began to be distracted, excited, stirred. When the curtain rose on the beautiful tropical scene, the lush island, the turquoise sea, the realistic strip of golden sand, Pierre gave an audible oath of admiration and surprise. The people about him began to be amused by the excitement of this handsome, haggard young man, so graceful and intense, so different with his hardness and leanness, the brilliance of his eyes, the brownness of his skin. His clothes were good enough, but they fitted him with an odd air of disguise. An experienced eye would inevitably have seen the appropriateness of flannel shirt, gay silk neck-handkerchief, boots, spurs, and chaparreras. Pierre was entirely unaware of being interesting or different. At that moment, caught up in the action of the play, he was as outside of himself as a child.

The palms of stage-land stirred, the ferns swayed; between then: tall, vivid greenness came Joan with her tread and grace and watchful eyes of a leopardess, her loose, wild hair decked with flowers: these and her make-up and her thinness disguised her completely from Pierre, but again his heart came to his throat and, when she put her hands up to her mouth and called, his pulses gave a leap. He shut his eyes. He remembered a voice calling him in to supper. "Pi-erre! Pi-erre!" He could sniff the smoke of his cabin fire. He opened his eyes. Of course, she wasn't Joan, this strange, gaunt creature. Besides, his wife could never have done what this woman was doing. Why, Joan couldn't talk like this, she couldn't act to save her soul! She was as simple as a child, and shy, with the unself-conscious shyness of wild things. To be sure, this "actress-lady" was making-believe she was a wild thing, and she was doing it almighty well, but Joan had been the reality, and grave and still, part of his own big, grave, mountain country, not a fierce, man-devouring animal of the tropics. Pierre lived in the play with all but one fragment of his brain, and that remembered Joan. It hurt like a hot coal, but he deliberately ignored the pain of it. He followed the action breathlessly, applauded with contagious fervor, surreptitiously rid himself of tears, and when, in the last scene, the angry, jealous woman sprang upon her tamer, he muttered, "Serve you right, you coyote!" with an oath of the cow-camp that made one of his neighbors jump and throttle a startled laugh.

The curtain fell, and while the applause rose and died down and rose again, and the people called for "Jane West! Jane West!" the stage-director, a plump little Jew, came out behind the footlights and held up his hand. There was a gradual silence.

"I want to make an interesting announcement," he said; "the author of 'The Leopardess' has hitherto maintained his anonymity, but to-night I have permission to give you his name. He is in the theater to-night. The name is already familiar to you as that of the author of a popular novel, 'The Canyon': Prosper Gael."

There was a stir of interest, a general searching of the house, clapping, cries of "Author! Author!" and in a few moments Prosper Gael left his box and appeared beside the director in answer to the calls. He was entirely self-possessed, looked even a little bored, but he was very white. He stood there bowing, a graceful and attractive figure, and he was about to begin a speech when he was interrupted by a renewed calling for "Jane West!" The audience wanted to see the star and the author side by side. Pierre joined in the clamor.

After a little pause Jane West came out from the opposite wing, walking slowly, dressed in her green gown, jewels on her neck and in her hair. She did not look toward the audience at all, nor bow, nor smile, and for some reason the applause began to falter as though the sensitive mind of the crowd was already aware that here something must be wrong. She came very slowly, her arms hanging, her head bent, her eyes looking up from under her brows, and she stood beside Prosper Gael, whose forced smile had stiffened on his lips. He looked at her in obvious fear, as a man might look at a dangerous madwoman. There must have been madness in her eyes. She stood there for a strange, terrible moment, moving her head slightly from side to side. Then she said something in a very low tone. Because of the extraordinary carrying quality of her voice—the question was heard by every one there present:

"You wrote the play? You wrote the play?"

She said it twice. She seemed to quiver, to gather herself together, her hands bent, her arms lifted. She flew at Prosper with all the sudden strength of her insanity.

There was an outcry, a confusion. People rushed to Gael's assistance. Men caught hold of Joan, now struggling frantically. It was a dreadful sight, mercifully a brief one. She collapsed utterly, fell forward, the strap of her gown breaking in the grasp of one of the men who held her. For an instant every one in the audience saw a strange double scar that ran across her shoulder to the edge of the shoulder-blade. It was like two bars.

Pierre got to his feet, dropped back, and hid his face. Then he was up, and struggling past excited people down the row, out into the aisle, along it, hurrying blindly down unknown passages till somehow he got himself into that confused labyrinth behind the scenes. Here a pale, distracted scene-shifter informed him that Miss West had already been taken home.

Pierre got the address, found his way out to the street, hailed a taxicab, and threw himself into it. He sat forward, every muscle tight; he felt that he could take the taxicab up and hurl it forward, so terrible was his impatience.

An apartment house was a greater novelty to him even than a theater, but, after a dazed moment of discovering that he did not have to ring or knock, but just push open the great iron-scrolled door and step into the brightly lighted, steam-heated marble hall, he decided that the woman at the desk was a person in authority, and to her he addressed himself, soft hat gripped in his hand, his face set to hide excitement.

The girl was pale and red-eyed. They had brought Miss West in a few minutes ago, she told him, and carried her up. She was still unconscious; poor thing! "I don't think you could see her, sir. Mr. Morena is up there, and Mr. Gael, and a doctor. A trained nurse has been sent for. Everything in the world will be done. She's such an elegant actress, ain't she? I've often seen her myself. And so kind and pleasant always. Yes, sir. I'll ask, if you like, but I'm sure they won't allow you up."

She put the receiver to her ear, pushed in the black plug, and Pierre listened to her questions.

"Can Miss West see any one? Can an old friend"—for so Pierre had named himself—"be allowed to see her? No. I thought not." This, with a sympathetic glance at Pierre. "She is not conscious yet. Dangerously ill."

"Could I speak to the doctor?" Pierre asked hoarsely.

"The gentleman wants to know if he can speak to the doctor. Certainly not at present. If he will wait, the doctor will speak to him on the way out."

Pierre sat on the bench and waited. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, head crushed in both hands, and the woman stared at him pitilessly—not that he was aware of her scrutiny. His eyes looked through his surroundings to Joan. He saw her in every pose and in every look in which he had ever seen her, and, with a very sick and frightened heart, he saw her, at the last, pass by him in her fur coat, throwing him that half-contemptuous look and smile. She didn't know him. Was he changed so greatly? Or was the change in her so enormous that it had disassociated her completely from her old life, from him? He kept repeating to himself Holliwell's stern, admonishing speech: "However changed for the worse she may be when you do find her, Pierre, you must remember that it is your fault, your sin. You must not judge her, must not dare to judge her. Judge yourself. Condemn yourself. It is for her to forgive if she can bring herself to do it."

So now Pierre fought down his suspicions and his fears. He had not recognized Prosper. The man who had come in out of the white night, four years ago, had worn his cap low over his eyes, his collar turned up about his face, and, even at that, Pierre, in his drunken stupor, had not been able to see him very clearly. This Prosper Gael who had stood behind the footlights, this Prosper Gael at whom Joan, from some unknown cause, had sprung like a woman maddened by injury, was a person entirely strange to Pierre. But Pierre hated him. The man had done Joan some insufferable mischief, which at the last had driven her beside herself. Pierre put up a hand, pressing it against his eyes. He wanted to shut out the picture of that struggling girl with her torn dress and the double scar across her shoulder. If it hadn't been for the scar he would never have known her—his Joan, his gentle, silent Joan! What had they been doing to her to change her so? No, not they. He. He had changed her. He had branded her and driven her out. It was his fault. He must try to find her again, to find the old Joan—if she should live. The doctor had said that she was desperately ill. O God! What was keeping him so long? Why didn't he come?

The arrival of the trained nurse distracted Pierre for a few moments. She went past him in her gray cloak, very quiet and earnest, and the elevator lifted her out of sight.

"Were you in the theater to-night?" asked the girl at the desk, seeing that he was temporarily aware of her again.

"Yes, ma'am."

She was puzzled by his appearance and the fashion of his speech. He must be a gentleman, she thought, for his bearing was gentle and assured and unself-conscious, but he wore his clothes differently and spoke differently from other gentlemen. That "Yes, ma'am," especially disturbed her. Then she remembered a novel she had read and her mind jumped to a conclusion. She leaned forward.

"Say, aren't you from the West?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You weren't ever a cowboy, were you?"

Pierre smiled. "Yes, ma'am. I was raised in a cow-camp. I was a cowboy till about seven years ago when I took to ranchin'."

"Where was that?"

"Out in Wyoming."

"And you've come straight from there to New York?" She pronounced it "Noo Yoik."

"No, ma'am. I've been in Alasky for two years now. I've been in a lumber-camp."

"Gee! That's real interesting. And you knew Miss West before she came East, then?"

"Yes, ma'am." But there was a subtle change in Pierre's patient voice and clear, unhappy eyes, so that the girl fell to humming and bottled up her curiosity. But just as soon as he began to brood again she gave up her whole mind to staring at him. Gee! He was brown and strong and thin! And a good-looker! She wished that she had worn her transformation that evening and her blue blouse. He might have taken more interest in her.

A stout, bald-headed man, bag in hand, stepped out of the elevator, and Pierre rippled to his feet.

"Are you the doctor?"

"Yes. Oh, you're the gentleman who wanted to see Miss West. She's come to, but she is out of her head completely ... doesn't know any one. Can you step out with me?"

Pierre kept beside him and stood by the motor, hat still in his hand, while the doctor talked irritably: "No. You certainly can't see her, for some time. I shall not allow any one to see her, except the nurse. It will be a matter of weeks. She'll be lucky if she gets back her sanity at all. She was entirely out of her head there at the theater. She's worn out, nerves frayed to a frazzle. Horribly unhealthy life and unnatural. To take a country girl, an ignorant, untrained, healthy animal, bring her to the city and force her under terrific pressure into a life so foreign to her—well! it was just a piece of d——d brutality." Then his acute eye suddenly fixed itself on the man standing on the curb listening.

"You're from the West yourself?"

"Yes, sir."

"Knew her in the old days—eh?"

"Yes, sir." Pierre's voice was faint and he put a hand against the motor.

"Well, why don't you take her back with you to that life? You're not feeling any too fit yourself, are you? Look here. Get in and I'll drop you where you belong."

Pierre obeyed rather blindly and leaned back with closed eyes. The doctor got out a flask and poured him a dose of brandy.

"What's the trouble? Too much New York?"

Pierre shook his head and smiled. "No, sir. I've been bothered and didn't get round to eating and sleeping lately."

"Then I'll take you to a restaurant and we'll have supper. I need something myself. And, look here, I'll make you a promise. Just as soon as I consider her fit for an interview with any one, I'll let you see Miss West. That helps you a whole lot, doesn't it?"

But there were other powers, besides this friendly one, watching over Joan, and they were bent upon keeping Pierre away. Day after sickening day Pierre came and stood beside the desk, and the girl, each time a little more careless of him, a little more insolent toward him—for the cowboy would not notice her blue blouse and her transformation and the invitation of her eyes—gave him negligent and discouraging information.

"Miss West was better, but very weak. No. She wouldn't see any one. Yes, Mr. Morena could see her, but not Mr. Landis, certainly not Mr. Pierre Landis, of Wyoming."

And the doctor, being questioned by the half-frantic Westerner, admitted that Mr. Morena had hinted at reasons why it might be dangerous for the patient to see her old friend from the West. Pierre stood to receive this sentence, and after it, his eyes fell. The doctor had seen the quick, desperate moisture in them.

"I tell you what, Landis," he said, putting a hand on Pierre's shoulder. "I'm willing to take a risk. I'm sure of one thing. Miss West hasn't even heard of your inquiries."

"You mean Morena's making it up—about her not being willing to see me?"

"I do mean that. And no doubt he's doing it with the best intentions. But I'm willing to take a risk. See those stairs? You run up them to the fifth floor. The nurse is out. Gael is in attendance; that is, he's in the sitting-room. She doesn't know of his presence, hasn't been allowed to see him. Miss West's door—the outside one—is ajar. Go up. Get past Gael if you can. Behave yourself quietly, and if you see the least sign of weakness on the part of Miss West, or if she shows the slightest disinclination for your company, come down—I'm trusting you—as quickly as you can and tell me. I'll wait. Have I your promise?"

"Yes, sir," gasped Pierre.

The doctor smiled at the swift, leaping grace of his Western friend's ascent. He was anxious concerning the result of his experiment, but there was a memory upon him of a haunted look in Joan's eyes that seemed the fellow to a look of Pierre's. He rather believed in intuitions, especially his own.



CHAPTER XIII

THE END OF THE TRAIL

At the top of the fourth flight of steps, Pierre found himself facing a door that stood ajar. Beyond that door was Joan and he knew not what experience of discovery, of explanation, of punishment. What he had suffered since the night of his cruelty would be nothing to what he might have to suffer now at the hands of the woman he had loved and hurt. That she was incredibly changed he knew, what had happened to change her he did not know. That she had suffered greatly was certain. One could not look at the face of Jane West, even under its disguise of paint and pencil, without a sharp realization of profound and embittering experience. And, just as certainly, she had gone far ahead of her husband in learning, in a certain sort of mental and social development. Pierre was filled with doubt and with dread, with an almost unbearable self-depreciation. And at the same time he was filled with a nameless fear of what Joan might herself have become.

He stood with his hand on the knob of that half-opened door, bent his head, and drew some deep, uneven breaths. He thought of Holliwell as though the man were standing beside him. He stepped in quietly, shut the door, and walked without hesitation down the passageway into the little, sunny sitting-room. There, before the crackling, open fire, sat Prosper Gael.

Prosper, it seemed, was alone in the small, silent place. He was sitting on the middle of his spine, as usual, with his long, thin legs stretched out before him and a veil of cigarette smoke before his eyes. He turned his head idly, expecting, no doubt, to see the nurse.

Pierre, white and grim, stood looking down at him.

The older man recognized him at once, but he did not change his position by a muscle, merely lounged there, his head against the side of the cushioned chair, the brilliant, surprised gaze changing slowly to amused contempt. His cigarette hung between the long fingers of one hand, its blue spiral of smoke rising tranquilly into a bar of sunshine from the window.

"The doctor told me to come up," said Pierre gravely. He was aware of the insult of this stranger's attitude, but he was too deeply stirred, too deeply suspenseful, to be irritated by it. He seemed to be moving in some rare, disconnected atmosphere. "I have his permission to see—to see Miss West, if she is willing to see me."

Prosper flicked off an ash with his little finger. "And you believe that she is willing to see you, Pierre Landis?" he asked slowly.

Pierre gave him a startled look. "You know my name?"

"Yes. I believe that four years ago, on an especially cold and snowy night, I interrupted you in a rather extraordinary occupation and gave myself the pleasure of shooting you." With that he got to his feet and stood before the mantel, negligently enough, but ready to his fingertips.

Pierre came nearer by a stride. He had been stripped at once of his air of high detachment. He was pale and quivering. He looked at Prosper with eyes of incredulous dread.

"Were you—that man?" A tide of shamed scarlet engulfed him and he dropped his eyes.

"I thought that would take the assurance out of you," said Prosper. "As a matter of fact, shooting was too good for you. On that night you forfeited every claim to the consideration of man or woman. I have the right of any decent citizen to turn you out of here. Do you still maintain your intention of asking for an interview with Miss Jane West?"

Pierre, half-blind with humiliation, turned without a word and made his way to the door. He meant to go away and kill himself. The purpose was like iron in his mind. That he should have to stand and, because of his own cowardly fault, to endure insult from this contemptuous stranger, made of life a garment too stained, too shameful to be worn. He was in haste to be rid of it. Something, however, barred his exit. He stumbled back to avoid it. There, holding aside the curtain in the doorway, stood Joan.

This time there was no possible doubt of her identity. She was wrapped in a long, blue gown, her hair had fallen in braided loops on either side of her face and neck. The unchanged eyes of Joan under her broad brows looked up at him. She was thin and wan, unbelievably broken and tired and hurt, but she was Joan. Pierre could not but forget death at sight of her. He staggered forward, and she, putting up her arms, drew him hungrily and let fall her head upon his shoulder.

"My gel! My Joan!" Pierre sobbed.

Prosper's voice sawed into their tremulous silence.

"So, after all, the branding iron is the proper instrument," he said. "A man can always recognize his estray, and when she is recognized she will come to heel."

Joan pushed Pierre from her violently and turned upon Prosper Gael. Her voice broke over him in a tumult of soft scorn.

"You know nothing of loving, Prosper Gael, not the first letter of loving. Nobody has learned that about you as well as I have. Now, listen and I will teach you something. This is something that I have learned. There are worse wounds than I had from Pierre, and it is by the hands of such men as you are that they are given. The hurts you get from love, they heal. Pierre was mad, he was a beast, he branded me as though I had been a beast. For long years I couldn't think of him but with a sort of horror in my heart. If it hadn't been for you, I might never have thought of him no other way forever. But what you did to me, Prosper, you with your white-hot brain and your gray-cold heart, you with your music and your talk throbbing and talking and whining about my soul, what you did to me has made Pierre's iron a very gentle thing. I have not acted in the play you wrote, the play you made out of me and my unhappiness, without understanding just what it was that you did to me. Perhaps if it hadn't been for the play, I might even have believed that you were capable of something better than that passion you had once for me—but not now. Never now can I believe it. What you make other people suffer is material for your own success and you delight in it. You make notes upon it. Pierre was mad through loving me, too ignorantly, too jealously, but what you did to me was through loving me too little. That was a brand upon my brain and soul. Sometimes since then that scar on my shoulder has seemed to me almost like the memory of a caress. I went away from Pierre, leaving him for dead, ready for death myself. When you left me, you left me alive and ready for what sort of living? It has been Pierre's love and his following after me that have kept me from low and beastly things. I've run from him knowing I wasn't fit to be found by him, but I've run clean and free." She began to tremble. "Will you say anything more to me and to my man?"

Prosper's face wore its old look of the winged demon. He was cold in his angry pain.

"Just one thing to your man, perhaps, if you will allow me, but perhaps you'll tell him that yourself. That his method is the right one, I admit. But in one respect not even a brand will altogether preserve property rights. Morena could say something on that score. So could I...."

"Hush!" said Joan; "I will tell him myself. Pierre, I left you for dead and I went away with this man, and after a while, because I thought you were dead, and because I was alone and sorrowful and weak, and because, perhaps, of what my mother was, I—I—" She fell away from Pierre, crouched against the side of the door, and wrapped the curtain round her face. "He told me you were dead—" The words came muffled.

Pierre had let her go and turned to Prosper. His own face was a mask of rage. Prosper knew that it was the Westerner's intention to kill. For a minute, no longer, he was a lightning channel of death. But Pierre, the Pierre shaped during the last four difficult years, turned upon his own writhing, savage soul and forced it to submit. It was as though he fought with his hands. Sweat broke out on him. At last, he stood and looked at Prosper with sane, stern eyes.

"If that's true what you hinted, if that's true what she was tryin' to tell, if it's even partly true," he said painfully, "then it was me that brought it upon her, not you—an' not herself, but me."

He turned back to Joan, drew the curtain from her face, drew down her hands, lifted her and carried her to the couch beside the fire.

There she shrank away from him, tried to push him back.

"It's true, Pierre; not that about Morena, but the rest is true. It's true. Only he told me you were dead. But you weren't—no, don't take my hands, I never did have dealings with Holliwell. Indeed, I loved only you. But you must have known me better than I knew myself. For I am bad. I am bad. I left you for dead and I went away."

He had mastered her hands, both of them in one of his, and he drew them close to his heart.

"Don't Joan! Hush, Joan! You mustn't. It was my doings, gel, all of it. Hush!"

He bent and crushed his lips against hers, silencing her. Then she gave way and clung to him, sobbing.

After a while Pierre looked up at Prosper Gael. All the patience and the hunger and the beauty of his love possessed his face. There was simply no room in his heart for any lesser thing.

"Stranger," he said in the grave and gentle Western speech, "I'll have to ask you to leave me with my wife."

Prosper made a curious, silent gesture of self-despair and went out, feeling his way before him.

It was half an hour later when the doctor came softly to the door and held back the curtain in his hand. He did not say anything and, after a silent minute, he let fall the curtain and moved softly away. He was reassured as to the success of his experiment. He had seen Joan's face.

THE END