ll. Not a step towards
her, not a smile, not a greeting, and between them stood Joan, her hands
clasped idly before her while she looked from face to face, trying to
understand. All the pangs of heart which come to woman between girlhood
and old age went burningly through Kate in that breathing space, and
afterwards she was cold, and saw herself and all the others clearly.

"I haven't come for supper. I've come to bring you back, Dan."

Not that she had the slightest hope that he would come, but she watched
him curiously, almost as if he were a stranger, to see how he would
answer.

"Come back?" he echoed. "To the cabin?"

"Where else?"

"It ain't happy there." He started. "You come up here with us, Kate."

"And raise Joan like a young animal in a cave?"

He looked at her with wonder, and then at the child.

"Ain't you happy, Joan, up here?"

"Oh, Daddy Dan, Joan's so happy!"

"You see," he said to Kate, "she's terribly happy."

It was his utter simplicity which convinced her that arguments and pleas
would be perfectly useless. Just behind the cool command which she
kept over herself now was hysteria. She knew that if she relaxed her
purposefulness for an instant the love for him would rush over her,
weaken her. She kept her mind clear and steady with a great effort
which was like divorcing herself from herself. When she spoke, there was
another being which stood aside listening in wonder to the words.

"You've chosen this life, Dan, I won't blame you for leaving me this
time any more than I blamed you the other times. I suppose it isn't you.
It's the same impulse, after all, that took you south after--after the
wild geese." She stopped, almost broken down by the memory, and then
recalled herself sternly. "It's the same thing that led you away after
MacStrann through the storm. But whether it's a weakness in you, or the
force of something outside your control, I see this thing clearly; we
can't go on. This is the end."

He seemed troubled, vaguely, as a dog is anxious when it sees a child
weep and cannot make out the reason.

"Oh, Dan," she burst out, "I love you more than ever! If it were I
alone, I'd follow you to the end of the world, and live as you live, and
do as you do. But it's Joan. She has to be raised as a child should be
raised. She isn't going to live with--with wild horses and wolves all
her life. And if she stays on here, don't you see that the same thing
which is a curse in you will grow