Pierre gave him a startled look. "You know my name?"
"Yes. I believe that four years ago, on an especially cold and snowy
night, I interrupted you in a rather extraordinary occupation and gave
myself the pleasure of shooting you." With that he got to his feet and
stood before the mantel, negligently enough, but ready to his
fingertips.
Pierre came nearer by a stride. He had been stripped at once of his
air of high detachment. He was pale and quivering. He looked at
Prosper with eyes of incredulous dread.
"Were you--that man?" A tide of shamed scarlet engulfed him and he
dropped his eyes.
"I thought that would take the assurance out of you," said Prosper.
"As a matter of fact, shooting was too good for you. On that night you
forfeited every claim to the consideration of man or woman. I have the
right of any decent citizen to turn you out of here. Do you still
maintain your intention of asking for an interview with Miss Jane
West?"
Pierre, half-blind with humiliation, turned without a word and made
his way to the door. He meant to go away and kill himself. The purpose
was like iron in his mind. That he should have to stand and, because
of his own cowardly fault, to endure insult from this contemptuous
stranger, made of life a garment too stained, too shameful to be worn.
He was in haste to be rid of it. Something, however, barred his exit.
He stumbled back to avoid it. There, holding aside the curtain in the
doorway, stood Joan.
This time there was no possible doubt of her identity. She was wrapped
in a long, blue gown, her hair had fallen in braided loops on either
side of her face and neck. The unchanged eyes of Joan under her broad
brows looked up at him. She was thin and wan, unbelievably broken and
tired and hurt, but she was Joan. Pierre could not but forget death at
sight of her. He staggered forward, and she, putting up her arms, drew
him hungrily and let fall her head upon his shoulder.
"My gel! My Joan!" Pierre sobbed.
Prosper's voice sawed into their tremulous silence.
"So, after all, the branding iron is the proper instrument," he said.
"A man can always recognize his estray, and when she is recognized she
will come to heel."
Joan pushed Pierre from her violently and turned upon Prosper Gael.
Her voice broke over him in a tumult of soft scorn.
"You know nothing of loving, Prosper Gael, not the first letter of
loving. Nobody has learned that about you as well as I have. Now,
listen and I will teach you something. This is something that I have
learned. There are worse wounds than I had from Pierre, and it is by
the hands of such men as you are that they are given. The hurts you
get from love, they heal. Pierre was mad, he was a beast, he branded
me as though I had been a beast. For long years I couldn't think of
him but with a sort of horror in my heart. If it hadn't been for you,
I might never have thought of him no other way forever. But what you
did to me, Prosper, you with your white-hot brain and your gray-cold
heart, you with your music and your talk throbbing and talking and
whining about my soul, what you did to me has made Pierre's iron a
very gentle thing. I have not acted in the play you wrote, the play
you made out of me and my unhappiness, without understanding just what
it was that you did to me. Perhaps if it hadn't been for the play, I
might even have believed that you were capable of something better
than that passion you had once for me--but not now. Never now can I
believe it. What you make other people suffer is material for your own
success and you delight in it. You make notes upon it. Pierre was mad
through loving me, too ignorantly, too jealously, but what you did to
me was through loving me too little. That was a brand upon my brain
and soul. Sometimes since then that scar on my shoulder has seemed to
me almost like the memory of a caress. I went away from Pierre,
leaving him for dead, ready for death myself. When you left me, you
left me alive and ready for what sort of living? It has been Pierre's
love and his following after me that have kept me from low and beastly
things. I've run from him knowing I wasn't fit to be found by him, but
I've run clean and free." She began to tremble. "Will you say anything
more to me and to my man?"