blank hopelessness for what
the day might bring. Could she hold out through more interminable hours?
Would she not break from sheer strain? There were moments when she
wavered and shook like a leaf in the wind, when the beating of her heart
was audible, when a child could have seen her distress. There were
other moments when all was ugly, unreal, impossible like things in a
nightmare. But when Kells was near or approached to look at her, like
a cat returned to watch a captive mouse, she was again strong, waiting,
with ever a strange and cold sense of the nearness of that swinging gun.
Late in the night she missed him, for how long she had no idea. She had
less trust in his absence than his presence. The nearer he came to her
the stronger she grew and the clearer of purpose. At last the black void
of canon lost its blackness and turned to gray. Dawn was at hand. The
horrible endless night, in which she had aged from girl to woman, had
passed. Joan had never closed her eyes a single instant.

When day broke she got up. The long hours in which she had rested
motionlessly had left her muscles cramped and dead. She began to walk
off the feeling. Kells had just stirred from his blanket under the
balsam-tree. His face was dark, haggard, lined. She saw him go down to
the brook and plunge his hands into the water and bathe his face with a
kind of fury. Then he went up to the smoldering fire. There was a gloom,
a somberness, a hardness about him that had not been noticeable the day
before.

Joan found the water cold as ice, soothing to the burn beneath her skin.
She walked away then, aware that Kells did not appear to care, and went
up to where the brook brawled from under the cliff. This was a hundred
paces from camp, though in plain sight. Joan looked round for her
horse, but he was not to be seen. She decided to slip away the first
opportunity that offered, and on foot or horseback, any way, to get out
of Kells's clutches if she had to wander, lost in the mountains, till
she starved. Possibly the day might be endurable, but another night
would drive her crazy. She sat on a ledge, planning and brooding, till
she was startled by a call from Kells. Then slowly she retraced her
steps.

"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.