And then she opened her volume in its middle and her eye looked upon familiar lines—
“So the two brothers and their murdered man—” Joan’s heart fell like a leaden weight and the color dropped from her face. In an instant she was back in Pierre’s room and the white night circled her in great silence and she was going over the story of her love and Pierre’s—their love, their beautiful, grave, simple love that had so filled her life. And now where was she? In the house of the man who had killed her husband! She had been waiting for Holliwell, but for a long while now she had forgotten that. Why was she still here? A strange, guilty terror came with the question. She looked down at the soft, yellow crêpe of the dress she had just made and she looked at her hands lying white and fine and useless, and she felt for the high comb Prosper had put into her hair. Then she stared around the gorgeous little room, snug from the world, so secret in its winter cañon. She heard Wen Ho’s incessant pattering in the kitchen, the crunch and thud of Prosper’s shoveling outside. It was suddenly a horrible nightmare, or less a nightmare than a dream, pleasant in the dreaming, but hideous to an awakened mind. She was awake. Isabella’s story had thrown her mind, so abruptly dislocated, back to a time before the change, back to her old normal condition of a young wife. That little homestead of Pierre’s! Such a hunger opened in her soul that she bent her head and moaned. She could think of nothing now but those two familiar, bare, clean rooms—Pierre’s gun, Pierre’s rod, her own coat there by the door, the snowshoes. There was no place in her mind for the later tragedy. She had gone back of it. She would rather be alone in her own home, desolate though it was, than anywhere else in all the homeless world.
And what could prevent her from going? She laughed aloud,—a short, defiant laugh,—rippled to her feet, and, in her room, took off Prosper’s “pretty things” and got into her own old clothes; the coarse underwear, the heavy stockings and boots, the rough skirt, the man’s shirt. How loosely they all hung! How thin she was! Now into her coat, her woolen cap down over her ears, her gloves—she was ready, her heart laboring like an exhausted stag’s, her knees trembling, her wrists mysteriously absent. She went into the hall, found her snowshoes, bent to tie them on, and, straightening up, met Prosper who had come in out of the snow.
He was glowing from exercise, but at sight of her and her pale excitement, the glow left him and his face went bleak and grim. He put out his hand and caught her by the arm and she backed from him against the wall—this before either of them spoke.
“Where are you going, Joan?”
“I’m a-goin’ home.”
He let go of her arm. “You were going like this, without a word to me?”
“Mr. Gael,” she panted, “I had a feelin’ like you wouldn’t ‘a’ let me go.”
He turned, threw open the door, and stepped aside. She confronted his white anger.
“Mr. Gael, I left Pierre dead. I’ve been a-waitin’ for Mr. Holliwell to come. I’m strong now. I must be a-goin’ home.” Suddenly, she blazed out: “You killed my man. What hev I to do with you?”