"Well," Joyce was all aglow, "Mr. Drew helped. He was so funny and jolly. Just a big boy, but he had the queerest ideas about things. When I think of him, sick and weak like he was, and yet living out all his brave thoughts just as if he was a giant—why, sometimes I go off and cry by myself."
Jude from his shadow and aloofness was staring dumbly at the pair opposite while the low-spoken words sank into his drowsiness. Jude was primitive. Actions were things to him; things that admitted of no shades of meaning. What the two were saying in no way modified the situation. Gaston's hand was caressing his wife—his woman, Jude would have expressed it—and the bald fact was enough.
A hot anger rose in him—an anger calculated to urge a personal assault then and there, upon the two who dared, in his own house, set his rights—his alone—aside.
The sleepy eyes widened and closed; the teeth showed through the rough beard—and then, like a smarting blow, came the memory of all that Gaston meant to him. Money! Gaston's money. There had been loans, trifling, but many, and now Gaston stood ready to advance money for this new building project. Money enough to make Jude master of the situation. But with this thought came others that crushed and bruised him.
He had been wrong. It was not his wife's folly alone that stood between him and her. Gaston had been using him. He was lending him money—hush money! And while he had gone his stupid way, thinking he held the whip hand over Joyce, the two had had their laugh at him. Money has done much for good and evil in this world, but it saved Gaston that night from a desperate attack.
A low cunning crept into Jude's thoughts. Very well, two or three could play at the same game.
More money! More! More! and who knew? Why he might make a choice in the future—a choice for himself.
He settled back and snored long and deep. Then he stretched and yawned and gave ample notice of his advance, in order that the conspirators might cover their tracks.
When he opened his eyes, Gaston was leaning forward with clasped hands stretched out toward the fading glow, and Joyce, crouched upon her stool with huddled knees, gave no sign that confusion held part in her thoughts.
"Say," Jude had already adopted the guise of the man with a purpose, "you don't suppose, do you, that that young parson is coming up here with any idea of saving souls?"