A hoot of an owl outside made Joyce start nervously. She was unstrung and superstitious—the fun of the game died in her, and she felt weak and nauseated. She spoke as if she wanted to finish the matter and have done with it forever.
"Well, I didn't give him the right. He didn't want it. I guess it was all foolish—everything is foolish. When he found out how I liked books, and how I wanted to know about things, he just naturally was kind and he let me go to his shack to read. Sometimes he was there, sometimes he wasn't. He just thought about me as if I was a little girl—Maggie Falstar used to go sometimes—he told her fairy stories—it was all the same to him, until—" the wonderful colour that very pale people often have rose suddenly to Joyce's face, and the eyes became dreamy—"one day a week ago."
"Well," Jude urged her on—he was sensing the situation from the man's standpoint.
"It was nothing. I had been reading a book there by myself. It was the kind of story that makes you feel like you was the woman it tells about. Then Mr. Gaston came in, and stood looking at me from the doorway; he seemed like the man in the book too. We looked at each other, and—and I was frightened and I guess he was—for I was grown up all of a sudden. Jude"—the girl was appealing to the familiar in him, the comradeship that would stand with her and for her—"he took me in his arms and—and—kissed me. Then he begged my pardon—and he pushed me away; then he led me to the door and said he—he didn't understand, but I—I mustn't come again to the shack alone, but to meet him in the Long Meadow to-day."
"Curse 'im," muttered Jude; "curse 'im." But the move was a wrong one. Joyce rose to her own defence and Gaston's.
"If you feel that way," she cried, "you can take yourself off."
"I—I don't feel that way," Jude returned illogically and meekly; "go on."
"He's a good man, Jude Lauzoon; better than any one here in St. Angé; and he isn't our kind—not mine, yours, or any one else's around here. He just made me feel ashamed of myself out in the Meadow to-day. I felt as if I had been bold and—and all wrong, but he wouldn't let me feel that way. He acted like I was a little girl to him again—only different; and—I'm going to tell you something." The pink flush dyed even the white throat now. "He said he wished I would get married—it was for the best. That's the way he wanted me for himself!" Joyce laughed with a bitterness that changed suddenly as she recalled the subtle power she had felt over Gaston even while he was forcing her out of his life.
"He asked me about Jock Filmer."
"Jock Filmer?" Jude's jaw dropped. Was all St. Angé hurtling around Joyce? "Jock Filmer—why—why—" Words failed him and he laughed noisily.