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"You are keeping something from me, Drew," he said slowly, "and you have a reason for doing so?" "Yes, Gaston, I am; and I have." The further he became involved, the more hopeless the position became to Drew. Gaston was seeking to solve Joyce Lauzoon's problem and his own, without the test of Ruth Dale.
She would try her meanest and basest weapon and if if it conquered, she would make terms. She, poor, dependent Joyce of the backwoods. Old Jared's girl. Jude Lauzoon's discarded wife. If she won a victory, what a victory it would be! It would prove to Drew she rose defiantly, and snatched the finery from the boxes. Her eyes were blazing and her blood ran hotly.
The night had wrought a change in him, seemingly; or perhaps it was Joyce's regained sanity. The man on the floor looked calm, peaceful and strangely dignified. His helpless peacefulness appealed to Joyce. She began to take away all signs of degradation that remained. The inanimate tokens of poor Jude Lauzoon's weakness and undoing.
Then he went away to find Jude to get Jude to set me free and we were going to be " the words trailed into a faint moan. "But I see, I see! Even if it had come out right I'd always be, for all his goodness, old Jared Birkdale's daughter, and Jude Lauzoon's wife. That, he would have to bear and suffer for me and his world would never forgive him nor me! "No; I do love him too well for that.
As he looked at the scene, his self-respect giving him courage to meet the day, Jude Lauzoon's soft-stepping figure materialized upon the edge of the pine woods. The humour of the situation for a moment gripped Gaston's senses. Had all St. Angé stayed awake and been on guard while the night passed? But the smile faded. How long had Jude been there?
Higher and higher the fever rose. Isa Tate, beside herself with fright, screamed for help, and for days Jude Lauzoon's house was the meeting place of Life and Death; then Life triumphed, and people breathed relievedly. "A homely young-un often makes handsome old bones," comforted Isa. Now that Joyce was creeping back from the dangers that had beset her, Isa felt a glow of pride and interest.
"Lay off your coat," he said cordially, "and draw up to the fire. The cold seems to be increasing." Gaston flung hat and coat from him, and pulled a chair nearer the blaze. "It will continue to grow colder from now on until the break-up. Drew, I cannot waste time, nor have I any inclination to mince matters. I know that you have, in no small measure, influenced Joyce Lauzoon's thought.
Angé and took up their new life in the bungalow which, under Jude Lauzoon's contractorship, had been made ready. During his first short stay in St. Angé young Drew had regained not only his lost strength, but he had gained an insight into the needs of the men and women of the small place.
She was no longer the beautiful woman in the golden dress; nor he the man of the illumined face and pleading arms. No; she was old Jared's wild little daughter; Jude Lauzoon's brutalized and dishonoured wife. Nothing, nothing could do away with those awful facts. He, the man she loved who thought in one wild hour that he loved her was not of her world nor of her kind.
But the outcome was, she walked up to Gaston's shack that same evening, and what happened there hasn't got into the society news yet; but when Jude and me and Tate went up to straighten out what I thought was a drunken lie of Lauzoon's, there she was all right, wrapped up in Gaston's red blanket, his arm around her, and him asking what we was going to do about it?"
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