"I don't mind wet feet," she hurried to assure him.
Old Donald was already at work pulling the tent-pegs. Joanne came close to Aldous, and he saw again that deep and wonderful light in her eyes. This time he knew that she meant he should see it, and words which he had determined not to speak fell softly from his lips.
"You are no longer afraid, Ladygray? That which you dreaded——"
"Is dead," she said. "And you, John Aldous? Without knowing, seeing me only as you have seen me, do you think that I am terrible?"
"No, could not think that."
Her hand touched his arm.
"Will you go out there with me, in the sunlight, where we can look down upon the little lake?" she asked. "Until to-day I had made up my mind that no one but myself would ever know the truth. But you have been good to me, and I must tell you—about myself—about him."
He found no answer. He left no word with MacDonald. Until they stood on the grassy knoll, with the lakelet shimmering in the sunlight below them, Joanne herself did not speak again. Then, with a little gesture, she said:
"Perhaps you think what is down there is dreadful to me. It isn't. I shall always remember that little lake, almost as Donald remembers the cavern—not because it watches over something I love, but because it guards a thing that in life would have destroyed me! I know how you must feel, John Aldous—that deep down in your heart you must wonder at a woman who can rejoice in the death of another human creature. Yet death, and death alone, has been the key from bondage of millions of souls that have lived before mine; and there are men—men, too—whose lives have been warped and destroyed because death did not come to save them. One was my father. If death had come for him, if it had taken my mother, that down there would never have happened—for me!"
She spoke the terrible words so quietly, so calmly, that it was impossible for him entirely to conceal their effect upon him. There was a bit of pathos in her smile.