“How’s that?”
“By wearing those clothes all day and half the night. If you expect me to teach you, you’ll have to do something for me, to make up for running away. You might put on pretty things for dinner, don’t you think? Your nervous system could stand that?”
“My nervous system,” drawled Joan, and added startlingly, for she did not often swear, “God!” It was an oath of scorn, and again Prosper laughed.
But he heard with a sort of terror the sound of her “man’s work” to which she energetically applied herself. It meant the return of her strength, of her independence. It meant the shortening of her captivity. Before long spring would rush up the cañon in a wave of melting snow, crested with dazzling green, and the valley would lie open to Joan. She would go unless—had he really failed so utterly to touch her heart? Was she without passion, this woman with the deep, savage eyes, the lips, so sensuous and pure, the body so magnificently made for living? She was not defended by any training, she had no moral standards, no prejudices, none of the “ideals.” She was completely open to approach, a savage. If he failed, it was a personal failure. Perhaps he had been too subtle, too restrained. She did not yet know, perhaps, what he desired of her. But he was afraid of rousing her hatred, which would be fully as simple and as savage as her love. That evening, after she had dressed to please him, and sat in her chair, tired, but with the beautiful, clean look of outdoor weariness on her face, and tried, battling with drowsiness, to give her mind to his reading and his talk, he was overmastered by his longing and came to her and knelt down, drawing down her hands to him, pressing his forehead on them.
For a moment she was stiff and still, then, “What is it, Mr. Gael?” she asked in a frightened half-voice.
He felt, through her body, the slight recoil of spirit, and drew away, and arose to his feet.
“You’re angry?”
He laughed.
“Oh, no. I’m not angry; why should I be? I’m a superman. I’m made—let’s say—of alabaster. Women with great eyes and wonderful voices and the beauty of broad-browed nymphs walking gravely down under forest arches, such women give me only a great, great longing to read aloud very slowly and carefully a ‘Child’s History of the English Race’!” He took the book, tossed it across the room, then stood, ashamed and defiant, laughing a little, a boy in disgrace.
Joan looked at him in profound bewilderment and dawning distress.