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.”