15

For several nights these stolen interviews were apparently the safer because of Joan’s tender blinding of her lover.  But it seemed that in Jim’s condition of mind this yielding of her lips and her whispers of love had really been a mistake.  Not only had she made the situation perilously sweet for herself, but in Jim’s case she had added the spark to the powder.  She realized her blunder when it was too late.  And the fact that she did not regret it very much, and seemed to have lost herself in a defiant, reckless spell, warned her again that she, too, was answering to the wildness of the time and place.  Joan’s intelligence had broadened wonderfully in this period of her life, just as all her feelings had quickened.  If gold had developed and intensified and liberated the worst passions of men, so the spirit of that atmosphere had its baneful effect upon her.  Joan deplored this, yet she had the keenness to understand that it was nature fitting her to survive.

Back upon her fell that weight of suspense—­what would happen next?  Here in Alder Creek there did not at present appear to be the same peril which had menaced her before, but she would suffer through fatality to Cleve or Kells.  And these two slept at night under a shadow that held death, and by day they walked on a thin crust over a volcano.  Joan grew more and more fearful of the disclosures made when Kells met his men nightly in the cabin.  She feared to hear, but she must hear, and even if she had not felt it necessary to keep informed of events, the fascination of the game would have impelled her to listen.  And gradually the suspense she suffered augmented into a magnified, though vague, assurance of catastrophe, of impending doom.  She could not shake off the gloomy presentiment.  Something terrible was going to happen.  An experience begun as tragically as hers could only end in a final and annihilating stroke.  Yet hope was unquenchable, and with her fear kept pace a driving and relentless spirit.

One night at the end of a week of these interviews, when Joan attempted to resist Jim, to plead with him, lest in his growing boldness he betray them, she found him a madman.

“I’ll pull you right out of this window,” he said, roughly, and then with his hot face pressed against hers tried to accomplish the thing he threatened.

“Go on—­pull me to pieces!” replied Joan, in despair and pain.  “I’d be better off dead!  And—­you—­hurt me—­so!”

“Hurt you!” he whispered, hoarsely, as if he had never dreamed of such possibility.  And then suddenly he was remorseful.  He begged her to forgive him.  His voice was broken, husky, pleading.  His remorse, like every feeling of his these days, was exaggerated, wild, with that raw tinge of gold-blood in it.  He made so much noise that Joan, more fearful than ever of discovery, quieted him with difficulty.

“Does Kells see you often—­these days?” asked Jim, suddenly.