A moment later they went out into the sweet, silver silence down to the silver lake.
Four months later the name of Prosper Gael began to be on every one’s lips, and before every one’s eyes; the world, his world, began to clamor for him. Even Wen Ho grumbled at this going out on tremendous journeys after the mail for which Prosper grew more and more greedy and impatient. His novel, “The Cañon,” had been accepted, was enormously advertised, had made an extraordinary success. All this he explained to Joan, who tried to rejoice because she saw that it was exquisite delight to Prosper. He was by way of thinking now that his exile, his Wyoming adventure, was to thank for his success, but when a woman, even such a woman as Joan, begins to feel that she has been a useful emotional experience, there begins pain. For Joan pain began and daily it increased. It was suffering for her to watch Prosper reading his letters, forwarded to him from the Western town where his friends and his secretary believed him to be recovering from some nervous illness; to watch him smoking and thinking of himself, his fame, his talents, his future; to watch him scribbling notes, planning another work, to hear his excited talk, now so impersonal, so unrelated to her; to see how his eagerness over her education slackened, faltered, died; to notice that he no longer watched the changeful humors of her beauty nor cared if she wore bronze or blue or yellow; and worst of all, to find him staring at her sometimes with a worried, impatient look which scuttled out of sight like some ugly, many-legged creature when it met her own eyes—painful, of course, yet such an old story. Joan, who had never heard of such experience, did not foresee the inevitable end, and, in so much, she was spared. The extra pain of forfeiting her dignity and self-respect did not touch her, for she made none of those most pitiful, unavailing efforts to hold him, to cling; did not even pretend indifference. She only drew gradually into herself, shrinking from her pain and from him as the cause of it; she only lost her glow of love-happiness, her face seemed dwindled, seemed to contract, and that secret look of a wild animal returned to her gray eyes. She quietly gave up the old regulations of their life; she did not remind him of the study-hours, the music-hours, the hours of wild outdoor play. She read under the firs, alone; she studied faithfully, alone; she climbed and swam, alone—or with his absent-minded, fitful company; she worked in her garden, alone. At night, when he was asleep, she lay with her hand pressed against her heart, staring at the darkness, listening to the night, waiting. Curiously enough, his inevitable returns of passion and interest, the always decreasing flood-mark, each time a line lower, did not deceive her, did not distract her. She never expressed her trouble, even to herself. She did not give it any words. She took her pain without wincing, without complaint, and when he seemed to need her in any little way, in any big way, she gave because she could not help it, because she had promised him largesse, because it was her nature to give. Besides, although she was instinctively waiting, she did not foresee the end.
It was in late October when, somewhere in the pile of Prosper’s mail, there lay a small gray envelope. Joan drew his attention to it, calling it a “queer little letter,” and he took it up slowly as though his deft and nervous fingers had gone numb. Before he opened it he looked at Joan and, in one sense, it was the last time he ever did look at her; for at that moment his stark spirit looked straight into hers, acknowledged its guilt, and bade her a mute and remorseful farewell.
He read and Joan watched. His face grew pale and bright as though some electric current had been turned into his veins; his eyes, looking up from the writing, but not returning to her, had the look given by some drug which is meant to stupefy, but which taken in an overdose intoxicates. He turned and made for the door, holding the little gray folded paper in his hand. On the threshold he half-faced her without lifting his eyes.
“I have had extraordinary news, Joan. I shall have to go off alone and think things out. I don’t know when I shall get back.” He went out and shut the door gently.
Joan stood listening. She heard him go along the passage and through the second door. She heard his feet on the mountain trail. Afterwards she went out and stood between the two sentinel firs that had marked the entrance to that snow-tunnel long since disappeared. Now it was a late October day, bright as a bared sword. The flowers of the Indian paint-brush burned like red candle flames everywhere under the firs, the fire-weed blazed, the aspen leaves were laid like little golden tiles against the metallic blue of the sky. The high peak pointed up dizzily and down, down dizzily into the clear emptiness of the lake. This great peak stood there in the glittering stillness of the day. A grouse boomed, but Joan was not startled by the sudden rush of its wings. She felt the sharp weight of that silent mountain in her heart; she might have been buried under it. So she felt it all day while she worked, a desperate, bright day,—hideous in her memory,—and at night she lay waiting. After hours longer than any other hours, the door of her bedroom opened and an oblong of moonlight, as white as paper, fell across the matted floor. Prosper stepped in noiselessly and walked over to her bed. He stood a moment and she heard him swallow.
“You’re awake, Joan?”
Her eyes were staring up at him, but she lay still.
“Listen, Joan.” He spoke in short sentences, waiting between each for some comment of hers which did not come. “I shall have to go away to-morrow. I shall have to go away for some time. I don’t want you to be unhappy. I want you to stay here for a while if you will, for as long as you want to stay. I am leaving you plenty of money. I will write and explain it all very clearly to you. I know that you will understand. Listen.” Here he knelt and took her hands, which he found lying cold and stiff under the cover, pressed against her heart. “I have made you happy here in this little house, haven’t I, Joan?”