This afternoon she was white with suspense. Her dread of the impending interview was like a physical illness. She sat in a high-backed chair, hands along the arms, head resting back, eyes half-closed, in that perfect stillness of which the animal and the savage are alone entirely capable. There were many gifts that Joan had brought from the seventeen years on Lone River. This grave immobility was one. She was very carefully dressed in a gown that accentuated her height and dignity. And she wore a few jewels. She wanted, pitifully enough, to mark every difference between this Joan and the Joan whom Prosper had drawn on his sled up the canyon trail. If he expected to force her back into the position of enchanted leopardess, to see her "lie at his feet and eat out of his hand," as Morena had once described the plight of Zona, he would see at a glance that she was no longer so easily mastered. In fact, sitting there, she looked as proud and perilous as a young Medea, black-haired with long throat and cold, malevolent lips. It was only in the eyes--those gray, unhappy, haunted eyes--that Joan gave away her eternal simplicity of heart. They were unalterably tender and lonely and hurt. It was the look in them that had prompted Shorty's description, "She's plumb movin' to me--looks about halfway between 'You go to hell' and 'You take me in your arms to rest.'" Prosper was announced, and Joan, keeping her stillness, merely turned her head toward him as he came into the room. She saw his rapid observation of the room, of her, even before she noticed the very apparent change in him. For he, too, was haggard and utterly serious as she did not remember him. He stood before her fire and asked her jerkily if she would let him smoke. She said "Yes," and those were the only words spoken for five unbearable minutes the seconds of which her heart beat out like a shaky hammer in some worn machine. Prosper smoked and stood there looking, now at her, now at the fire. At last, with difficulty, he smiled. "You are not going to make it easy for me, are you, Joan?" For her part she was not looking at him. She kept her eyes on the fire and this averted look distressed and irritated his nerves. "I am not trying to make it hard," she said; "I want you to say what you came to say and go." "Did _you_ ever love me, Joan?" He had said it to force a look from her, but it had the effect only of making her more still, if possible. "I don't know," she said slowly, answering with her old directness. "I thought you needed me. I was alone. I was scared of the emptiness when I went out and looked down the valley. I thought Pierre had gone out of the world and there was no living thing that wanted me. I came back and you met me and you put your arms round me and you said"--she closed her eyes and repeated his speech as though she had just heard it--"'Don't leave me, Joan.'"