to see her? No. I thought not." This, with
a sympathetic glance at Pierre. "She is not conscious yet. Dangerously
ill."

"Could I speak to the doctor?" Pierre asked hoarsely.

"The gentleman wants to know if he can speak to the doctor. Certainly
not at present. If he will wait, the doctor will speak to him on the
way out."

Pierre sat on the bench and waited. He leaned forward, elbows on
knees, head crushed in both hands, and the woman stared at him
pitilessly--not that he was aware of her scrutiny. His eyes looked
through his surroundings to Joan. He saw her in every pose and in
every look in which he had ever seen her, and, with a very sick and
frightened heart, he saw her, at the last, pass by him in her fur
coat, throwing him that half-contemptuous look and smile. She didn't
know him. Was he changed so greatly? Or was the change in her so
enormous that it had disassociated her completely from her old life,
from him? He kept repeating to himself Holliwell's stern, admonishing
speech: "However changed for the worse she may be when you do find
her, Pierre, you must remember that it is your fault, your sin. You
must not judge her, must not dare to judge her. Judge yourself.
Condemn yourself. It is for her to forgive if she can bring herself to
do it."

So now Pierre fought down his suspicions and his fears. He had not
recognized Prosper. The man who had come in out of the white night,
four years ago, had worn his cap low over his eyes, his collar turned
up about his face, and, even at that, Pierre, in his drunken stupor,
had not been able to see him very clearly. This Prosper Gael who had
stood behind the footlights, this Prosper Gael at whom Joan, from some
unknown cause, had sprung like a woman maddened by injury, was a
person entirely strange to Pierre. But Pierre hated him. The man had
done Joan some insufferable mischief, which at the last had driven her
beside herself. Pierre put up a hand, pressing it against his eyes. He
wanted to shut out the picture of that struggling girl with her torn
dress and the double scar across her shoulder. If it hadn't been for
the scar he would never have known her--his Joan, his gentle, silent
Joan! What had they been doing to her to change her so? No, not they.
He. He had changed her. He had branded her and driven her out. It was
his fault. He must try to find her again, to find the old Joan--if she
should live. The doctor had said that she was desperately ill. O God!
What w