“Your wife?” asked Joan.
“No.”
“For the one I said must have been like a tall child? She wasn’t your wife? She was dead?”
Prosper shook his head. “No. Did you think that? She was a woman I loved at that time very dearly and she was already married to another man.”
“You built that house for her? I don’t understand.”
“She had promised to leave her husband and to come away with me. I had everything ready, those rooms, those clothes, those materials, and when I went out to get her, I had a message saying that her courage had failed her, that she wouldn’t come.”
“She was a better woman than me,” said Joan bitterly.
Prosper laughed. “By God, she was not! She sent me down to hell. I couldn’t go back to the East again. I had laid very careful and elaborate plans. I was trapped out there in that horrible winter country....”
“It was not horrible,” said Joan violently; “it was the most wonderful, beautiful country in all the world.” And tears ran suddenly down her face.
But she would not let him come near to comfort her. “Go on,” she said presently.