"Your clothes are about done for, Joan," Prosper laughed one morning,
watching her belt in her tattered shirt; "you'll soon look like
Cophetua's beggar maid."
"I'm not quite barefoot yet." She held up a cracked boot.
"Joan--" He hesitated an instant, then got up from his desk, walked to
a window, and looked out at the bright morning. The lake was ruffled
with wind, the firs tossed, there were patches of brown-needled earth
under his window; his eyes were startled by a strip of green where
tiny yellow flowers trod on the very edge of the melting drift. The
window was open to soft, tingling air that smelt of snow and of sun,
of pines, of growing grass, of sap, of little leaf-buds. The birds
were in loud chorus. For several minutes Prosper stared and listened.
"What is it, Mr. Gael?" asked Joan patiently.
He started. "Oh," he said without looking at her again, "I was going
to tell you that there are a skirt and a sort of coat in--in a closet
in the hall. Do you want to use them?"
She went out to look. In five minutes--he had gone back to his work at
the desk--he heard her laugh, and, still laughing, she opened the door
again.
"Oh, Mr. Gael, were you really thinking that I could wear these?
Look."
He turned and looked at her. She had crowded her strong, lithe frame
into a brown tweed suit, a world too narrow for her, and she was
laughing heartily at herself and had come in to show him the misfit.
"These things, Mr. Gael," she said,--"they must have been made for a
tall child."
Prosper had too far tempted his pain, and in her vivid phrase it came
to life before him. She had painted a startling picture and he had
seen that suit, so small and trim, before.
Joan saw his face grow white, his eyes stared through her. He drew a
quick breath and winced away from her, hiding his face in his hands. A
moment later he was weeping convulsively, with violence, his head down
between his hands. Joan started toward him, but he made a wicked and
repellent gesture. She fled into her room and sat, bewildered, on her
bed.
All at once the question came to her: for whom had the delicate
fabrics been bought, for whom had this suit been made? "It was his
wife and she is dead," thought Joan, and very pitifully she took off
the suit, laid it and the other things away, and sitting by her window
rested her chin in her hands and stared out through the blue pines.
Tears ran down her face because she was so sorry for Prosper's pain.
And again, thought Joan, she had caused it, she who owed him
everything. Yes, she was deeply sorry for Prosper, deeply; her whole
heart was stirred. For the first time she had a longing to comfort him
with her hands.