by the change. Before, it had been the
face of a man beside himself with drink and the lust of animal power
and cruelty; now it was the wistful face of Pierre, drawn into a
tragic mask like Joan's when she came to herself; a miserably haunted
and harrowed face, hopeless as though it, too, like the outside world,
had lost or had never had a memory of sun. Evidently he submitted to
the dressing of his wound, but with a shamed and pitiful look.
Prosper's whole impression of the man was changed, and with the change
there began something like a struggle. He was afflicted by a crossing
of purposes and a stumbling of intention.

He did not care to risk a second look. He crept away and fled into the
windy dusk. He traveled with the wind like a blown rag, and, stopping
only for a few hours' rest at the ranger station, made the journey
home by morning of the second day. And on the journey he definitely
made up his mind concerning Joan.

Prosper Gael was a man of deliberate, though passionate, imagination.
He did not often act upon impulse, though his actions were often those
attempted only by passion-driven or impulsive folk. Prosper could
never plead thoughtlessness. He justified carefully his every action
to himself. Those were cold, dark hours of deliberation as he let the
wind drive him across the desolate land. When the wind dropped and a
splendid, still dawn swept up into the clean sky, he was at peace with
his own mind and climbed up the mountain trail with a half-smile on
his face.

In the dawn, awake on her pillows, Joan was listening for him, and at
the sound of his webs she sat up, pale to her lips. She did not know
what she feared, but she was filled with dread. The restful stupor
that had followed her storm of grief had spent itself and she was
suffering again--waves of longing for Pierre, of hatred for him,
alternately submerged her. All these bleak, gray hours of wind during
which Wen Ho had pattered in and out with meals, with wood for her
stove, with little questions as to her comfort, she had suffered as
people suffer in a dream; a restless misery like the misery of the
pine branches that leaped up and down before her window. The stillness
of the dawn, with its sound of nearing steps, gave her a sickness of
heart and brain, so that when Prosper came softly in at her door she
saw him through a mist. He moved quickly to her side, knelt by her,
took her hands. His touch at all times had a tingling charge of
vi