"Yes," said Prosper in a muffled voice, "it was likely to. But, Joan, Fate was on your side. Since I have been yours, I haven't belonged to any one but you. You've put your brand on me." "I don't want to hear about you," Joan broke in. "I am done with you. Have you seen this play?" "Yes." He found that in telling her so he could not meet her eyes. "Well, the man who wrote that knew what you are, and, if he didn't, every one that has seen me act in it, knows what you are." She paused, breathing fast and trembling. "Good-bye," she said. He went vaguely toward the door, then threw up his head defiantly. "No," he said, "it's not going to be good-bye. I've found you. You must let me tell you the truth about myself. Come, Joan, you're as just as Heaven. You never read my explanations. You've never heard my side of it. You'll let me come to see you and you'll hear me out. Don't do me an injustice. I'll leave the whole thing in your hands after that. But you must give me that one chance." "Chance?" repeated Joan. "Chance for what?" "Oh,"--Prosper flung up his lithe, long hands--"oh, for nothing but a cleansing in your sight. I want what forgiveness I can wring from you. I want what understanding I can force from you. That's all." She thought, standing there, still and tall, her arms hanging, her eyes wide and secret, as he had remembered them in her thin, changed, so much more expressive face. "Very well," she said, "you may come. I'll hear you out." She gave him the address and named an afternoon hour. "Good-night." It was a graceful and dignified dismissal. Prosper bit his lip, bowed and left her. As the door closed upon her, he knew that it had closed upon the only real and vivid presence in his life. War had burnt away his glittering, clever frivolity. Betty was the adventure, Betty was the tinsel; Joan was the grave, predestined woman of his man. For the first time in his life he found himself face to face with the cleanness of despair. CHAPTER VII AFTERMATH Joan waited for Prosper on the appointed afternoon. There was a fire on her hearth and a March snow-squall tapped against the window panes. The crackle of the logs inside and that eerie, light sound outside were so associated with Prosper that, even before he came, Joan, sitting on one side of the hearth, closed her eyes and felt that he must be opposite to her in his red-lacquered chair, his long legs stuck out in front, his amused and greedy eyes veiled by a cloud of cigarette smoke. Since she had seen him at the theater, she had been suffering from sleeplessness. At night she would go over and over the details of their intercourse, seeing them, feeling them, living them in the light of later knowledge, till the torment was hardly to be borne. Three days and nights of this inner activity had brought back that sharp line between her brows and the bitter tightening of her lips.