"Jim, I'd be the happiest girl in the world if--if I only COULD
marry you!" she breathed, passionately.
"But will you--will you? Say yes! Say yes!"
"YES!" replied Joan in her desperation. "I hope that pleases you.
But what on earth is the use to talk about it now?"
Cleve seemed to expand, to grow taller, to thrill under her nervous
hands. And then he kissed her differently. She sensed a shyness, a
happiness, a something hitherto foreign to his attitude. It was
spiritual, and somehow she received an uplift of hope.
"Listen," he whispered. "There's a preacher down in camp. I've seen
him--talked with him. He's trying to do good in that hell down
there. I know I can trust him. I'll confide in him--enough. I'll
fetch him up here tomorrow night--about this time. Oh, I'll be
careful--very careful. And he can marry us right here by the window.
Joan, will you do it? ... Somehow, whatever threatens you or me--
that'll be my salvation! ... I've suffered so. It's been burned in
my heart that YOU would never marry me. Yet you say you love me! ...
Prove it! ... MY WIFE! ... Now, girl, a word will make a man of me!"
"Yes!" And with the word she put her lips to his with all her heart
in them. She felt him tremble. Yet almost instantly he put her from
him.
"Look for me to-morrow about this time," he whispered. "Keep your
nerve. ... Good night."
That night Joan dreamed strange, weird, unremembered dreams. The
next day passed like a slow, unreal age. She ate little of what was
brought to her. For the first time she denied Kells admittance and
she only vaguely sensed his solicitations. She had no ear for the
murmur of voices in Kells's room. Even the loud and angry notes of a
quarrel between Kells and his men did not distract her.
At sunset she leaned out of the little window, and only then, with
the gold fading on the peaks and the shadow gathering under the
bluff, did she awaken to reality. A broken mass of white cloud
caught the glory of the sinking sun. She had never seen a golden
radiance like that. It faded and dulled. But a warm glow remained.
At twilight and then at dusk this glow lingered.
Then night fell. Joan was exceedingly sensitive to the sensations of
light and shadow, of sound and silence, of dread and hope, of
sadness and joy.
That pale, ruddy glow lingered over the bold heave of the range in
the west. It was like a fire that would not go out, that would live
to-morrow, and burn golden. The sky shone with deep, rich blue color
fired with a thousand stars, radiant, speaking, hopeful. And there
was a white track across the heavens. The mountains flung down their
shadows, impenetrable, like the gloomy minds of men; and everywhere
under the bluffs and slopes, in the hollows and ravines, lay an
enveloping blackness, hiding its depth and secret and mystery.