“Before you came, Joan,” Prosper went on, “it was horrible. It was like being starved. Every thing in the house reminded me of—her. I had planned it all very carefully and we were to have been—happy. You can fancy what it was to be there alone.”
Joan nodded. She was just and she was honestly trying to put herself in his place. “Yes,” she said; “if I had gone back and Pierre had been dead, his homestead would have been like that to me.”
“It was because I was so miserable that I went out to hunt. I’d scour the country all day and half the night to tire myself out, that I could get some sleep. I was pretty far from home that moonlight night when I heard you scream for help....”
Joan’s face grew whiter. “Don’t tell about that,” she pleaded.
He paused, choosing another opening. “After I had bandaged you and told you that Pierre was dead—and I honestly thought he was—I didn’t know what to do with you. You couldn’t be left, and there was no neighbor nearer than my own house; besides, I had shot a man, and, perhaps,—I don’t know, maybe I was influenced by your beauty, by my own crazy loneliness.... You were very beautiful and very desolate. I was in a fury over the brute’s treatment of you....”
“Hush!” said Joan; “you are not to talk about Pierre.”
Prosper shrugged. “I decided to take you home with me. I wanted you desperately, just, I believe, to take care of, just to be kind to—truly, Joan, I was lonely to the point of madness. Some one to care for, some one to talk to, was absolutely necessary to save my reason. So when I was leading you out, I—I saw Pierre’s hand move—”
Joan stood up. After a moment she controlled herself with an effort and sat down again. “Go on. I can stand it,” she said.
“And I thought to myself, ‘The devil is alive and he deserves to be dead. This woman can never live with him again. God wouldn’t sanction such an act as giving her back to his hands.’ And I was half-mad myself, I’d been alone so long ... I stood so you couldn’t see him, Joan, and I threw an elk-hide over him and led you out.”
“I followed you; I didn’t look at Pierre; I left him lying there,” gasped Joan.