"Don't you want to eat?" he asked.
"I'm not hungry," she replied.
"Well, eat anyhow--if it chokes you," he ordered.
Joan seated herself while he placed food and drink before her. She
did not look at him and did not feel his gaze upon her. Far asunder
as they had been yesterday the distance between them to-day was
incalculably greater. She ate as much as she could swallow and
pushed the rest away. Leaving the camp-fire, she began walking
again, here and there, aimlessly, scarcely seeing what she looked
at. There was a shadow over her, an impending portent of
catastrophe, a moment standing dark and sharp out of the age-long
hour. She leaned against the balsam and then she rested in the stone
seat, and then she had to walk again. It might have been long, that
time; she never knew how long or short. There came a strange
flagging, sinking of her spirit, accompanied by vibrating, restless,
uncontrollable muscular activity. Her nerves were on the verge of
collapse.
It was then that a call from Kells, clear and ringing, thrilled all
the weakness from her in a flash, and left her limp and cold. She
saw him coming. His face looked amiable again, bright against what
seemed a vague and veiled background. Like a mountaineer he strode.
And she looked into his strange, gray glance to see unmasked the
ruthless power, the leaping devil, the ungovernable passion she had
sensed in him.
He grasped her arm and with a single pull swung her to him. "YOU'VE
got to pay that ransom!"
He handled her as if he thought she resisted, but she was
unresisting. She hung her head to hide her eyes. Then he placed an
arm round her shoulders and half led, half dragged her toward the
cabin.
Joan saw with startling distinctness the bits of balsam and pine at
her feet and pale pink daisies in the grass, and then the dry
withered boughs. She was in the cabin.
"Girl! ... I'm hungry--for you!" he breathed, hoarsely. And turning
her toward him, he embraced her, as if his nature was savage and he
had to use a savage force.
If Joan struggled at all, it was only slightly, when she writhed and
slipped, like a snake, to get her arm under his as it clasped her
neck. Then she let herself go. He crushed her to him. He bent her
backward--tilted her face with hard and eager hand. Like a madman,
with hot working lips, he kissed her. She felt blinded--scorched.
But her purpose was as swift and sure and wonderful as his passion
was wild. The first reach of her groping hand found his gun-belt.
Swift as light her hand slipped down. Her fingers touched the cold
gun--grasped with thrill on thrill--slipped farther down, strong and
sure to raise the hammer. Then with a leaping, strung intensity that
matched his own she drew the gun. She raised it while her eyes were
shut. She lay passive under his kisses--the devouring kisses of one
whose manhood had been denied the sweetness, the glory, the fire,
the life of woman's lips. It was a moment in which she met his
primitive fury of possession with a woman's primitive fury of
profanation. She pressed the gun against his side and pulled the
trigger.