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 cañon 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.”