e. I
was in a fury over the brute's treatment of you...."

"Hush!" said Joan; "you are not to talk about Pierre."

Prosper shrugged. "I decided to take you home with me. I wanted you
desperately, just, I believe, to take care of, just to be kind
to--truly, Joan, I was lonely to the point of madness. Some one to
care for, some one to talk to, was absolutely necessary to save my
reason. So when I was leading you out, I--I saw Pierre's hand move--"

Joan stood up. After a moment she controlled herself with an effort
and sat down again. "Go on. I can stand it," she said.

"And I thought to myself, 'The devil is alive and he deserves to be
dead. This woman can never live with him again. God wouldn't sanction
such an act as giving her back to his hands.' And I was half-mad
myself, I'd been alone so long ... I stood so you couldn't see him,
Joan, and I threw an elk-hide over him and led you out."

"I followed you; I didn't look at Pierre; I left him lying there,"
gasped Joan.

Prosper went on monotonously. "When I came back a week later, I
thought he would be dead. It was dusk, the wind was blowing, the snow
was driving in a scud. I came down to the cabin and dropped below the
drift by that northern window, and, the second I looked in, I dropped
out of sight. There was a light and a fire. Your husband was lying
before the fire on a cot. There was another man there, your Mr.
Holliwell; they were talking, Holliwell was dressing Pierre's wound. I
went away like a ghost, and while I was going back, I thought it all
out; and I decided to keep you for myself. I suppose," said Prosper
dully, "that that was a horrible sin. I didn't see it that way then.
I'm not sure I see it that way now. Pierre had tied you up and pressed
a white-hot iron into your bare shoulder. If you went back to him, if
he took you back, how was I to know that he might not repeat his
drunken deviltry, or do worse, if anything could be worse! It was the
act of a fiend. It put him out of court with me. Whatever I gave you,
education and beauty, and ease, must be better and happier for you
than life with such a brute as Pierre--"

"Stop!" said Joan between her teeth; "you know nothing of Pierre and
me; you only know that one dreadful night. You don't know--the rest."

"I don't want to know the rest," he said sharply; "that is enough to
justify my action. I thought so then and I think so now. You won't be
able to make me change that opinion."

"I shall not