For ten evenings this went on, Pierre's heart slowly heating itself,
until, all at once, the flame leaped.
Joan had untied her apron and reached up for her book. Pierre had been
waiting, hoping that of her free will she might prefer his company to
the "parson feller's"--for in his ignorance those books were jealously
personified--but, without a glance in his direction, she had turned as
usual to the shelf.
"You goin' to read?" asked Pierre hoarsely. It was a painful effort to
speak.
She turned with a childish look of astonishment. "Yes, Pierre."
He stood up with one of his lithe, swift movements, all in one
rippling piece. "By God, you're not, though!" said he, strode over to
her, snatched the volume from her, threw it back into its place, and
pointed her to her chair.
"You set down an' give heed to me fer a change, Joan Carver," he said,
his smoke-colored eyes smouldering. "I didn't fetch you up here to
read parsons' books an' waste oil. I fetched you up here--to--" He
stopped, choked with a sudden, enormous hurt tenderness and sat down
and fell to smoking and staring, hot-eyed, into the fire.
And Joan sat silent in her place, puzzled, wistful, wounded, her idle
hands folded, looking at him for a while, then absently before her,
and he knew that her mind was busy again with the preacher feller's
books. If he had known better how to explain his heart, if she had
known how to show him the impersonal eagerness of her awakening
mind--! But, savage and silent, they sat there, loving each other,
hurt, but locked each into his own impenetrable life.
After that, Joan changed the hours of her study and neglected
housework and sagebrush-grubbing, but, nonetheless, were Pierre's
evenings spoiled. Perfection of intercourse is the most perishable of
all life's commodities. Now, when he talked, he could not escape the
consciousness of having constrained his audience; she could not escape
her knowledge of his jealousy, the remembrance of his mysterious
outbreak, the irrepressible tug of the story she was reading. So it
went on till snow came and they were shut in, man and wife, with only
each other to watch, a tremendous test of good-fellowship. This
searching intimacy came at a bad time, just after Holliwell's third
visit when he had brought a fresh supply of books.
"There's poetry this time," he said. "Get Pierre to read it aloud to
you."
The suggestion was met by a rude laugh from Pierre.
"I wouldn't be wastin' my time," he jeered.