“But I want you—­I love you!” he said, low and hard.

“Love!  That’s not love,” she replied in scorn.  “God only knows what it is.”

“Call it what you like,” he went on, bitterly.  “You’re a young, beautiful, sweet woman.  It’s wonderful to be near you.  My life has been hell.  I’ve had nothing.  There’s only hell to look forward to—­ and hell at the end.  Why shouldn’t I keep you here?”

“But, Kells, listen,” she whispered, earnestly, “suppose I am young and beautiful and sweet—­as you said.  I’m utterly in your power.  I’m compelled to seek your protection from even worse men.  You’re different from these others.  You’re educated.  You must have had—­a—­ a good mother.  Now you’re bitter, desperate, terrible.  You hate life.  You seem to think this charm you see in me will bring you something.  Maybe a glimpse of joy!  But how can it?  You know better.  How can it ... unless I—­I love you?”

Kells stared at her, the evil and hardness of his passion corded in his face.  And the shadows of comprehending thought in his strange eyes showed the other side of the man.  He was still staring at her while he reached to put aside the curtains; then he dropped his head and went out.

Joan sat motionless, watching the door where he had disappeared, listening to the mounting beats of her heart.  She had only been frank and earnest with Kells.  But he had taken a meaning from her last few words that she had not intended to convey.  All that was woman in her—­mounting, righting, hating—­leaped to the power she sensed in herself.  If she could be deceitful, cunning, shameless in holding out to Kells a possible return of his love, she could do anything with him.  She knew it.  She did not need to marry him or sacrifice herself.  Joan was amazed that the idea remained an instant before her consciousness.  But something had told her this was another kind of life than she had known, and all that was precious to her hung in the balance.  Any falsity was justifiable, even righteous, under the circumstances.  Could she formulate a plan that this keen bandit would not see through?  The remotest possibility of her even caring for Kells—­that was as much as she dared hint.  But that, together with all the charm and seductiveness she could summon, might be enough.  Dared she try it?  If she tried and failed Kells would despise her, and then she was utterly lost.  She was caught between doubt and hope.  All that was natural and true in her shrank from such unwomanly deception; all that had been born of her wild experience inflamed her to play the game, to match Kells’s villainy with a woman’s unfathomable duplicity.

And while Joan was absorbed in thought the sun set, the light failed, twilight stole into the cabin, and then darkness.  All this hour there had been a continual sound of men’s voices in the large cabin, sometimes low and at other times loud.  It was only when Joan distinctly heard the name Jim Cleve that she was startled out of her absorption, thrilling and flushing.  In her eagerness she nearly fell as she stepped and gropped through the darkness to the door, and as she drew aside the blanket her hand shook.