In the dawn, awake on her pillows, Joan was listening for him, and at the sound of his webs she sat up, pale to her lips. She did not know what she feared, but she was filled with dread. The restful stupor that had followed her storm of grief had spent itself and she was suffering again—waves of longing for Pierre, of hatred for him, alternately submerged her. All these bleak, gray hours of wind during which Wen Ho had pattered in and out with meals, with wood for her stove, with little questions as to her comfort, she had suffered as people suffer in a dream; a restless misery like the misery of the pine branches that leaped up and down before her window. The stillness of the dawn, with its sound of nearing steps, gave her a sickness of heart and brain, so that when Prosper came softly in at her door she saw him through a mist. He moved quickly to her side, knelt by her, took her hands. His touch at all times had a tingling charge of vitality and will.
“He has been cared for, Joan,” said Prosper. “Some friend of his came and did all that was left to be done.”
“Some friend?” In the pale, delicately expanding light Joan’s face gleamed between its black coils of hair with eyes like enchanted tarns. In fact they had been haunted during his absence by images to shake her soul. Prosper could see in them reflections of those terrors that had been tormenting her. His touch pressed reassurance upon her, his eyes, his voice.
“My poor child! My dear! I’m glad I am back to take care of you! Cry. Let me comfort you. He has been cared for. He is not lying there alone. He is dead. Let’s forgive him, Joan.” He shook her hands a little, urgently, and a most painful memory of Pierre’s beseeching grasp came upon Joan.
She wrenched away and fell back, quivering, but she did not cry, only asked in her most moving voice, “Who took care of Pierre—after I went away and left him dead?”
Prosper got to his feet and stood with his arms folded, looking wearily down at her. His mouth had fallen into rather cynical lines and there were puckers at the corners of his eyes. “Oh, a big, fair young man—a rosy boy-face, serious-looking, blue eyes.”
Joan was startled and turned round. “It was Mr. Holliwell,” she said, in a wondering tone. “Did you talk with him? Did you tell him—?”
“No. Hardly.” Prosper shook his head. “I found out what he had done for your Pierre without asking unnecessary questions. I saw him, but he did not see me.”
“He’ll be comin’ to get me,” said Joan. It was an entirely unemotional statement of certainty.
Prosper pressed his lips into a line and narrowed his eyes upon her.