"I want to ask you something, and I want the truth."
"Oh!" Joyce sat opposite, and let her clasped hands fall upon the table laid out for the evening meal with the brown bowl of early asters set in the centre. She forgot her hunger, and the steaming pot on the stove bubbled unheeded.
"What you want to know, Jude? You look mighty upset."
Jude saw with his new, keen vision that she was startled and was sparring for time. "It's about," he leaned forward, "it's about you and--and him. I saw you in the Long Medder. I saw him hold your hands and--and kiss you." The words smarted the dry, hot lips. "I--I want to know what it means."
Jude was trembling visibly as he finished, but Joyce's silence, her apparent discomfort, gave him a kind of assurance that upheld him in his position.
The girl across the table had been awakened several weeks ago in Gaston's little shack among the pines. Since then she had been living vividly and fervently. The question with her, now, was how best to voice herself--the self that Jude in no wise knew. Womanlike, she did not want to plunge into what might prove an abyss. She wanted to take her own way, but with a half-unconscious coquetry she desired to drag her captives whither she went.
In the old stupid life before her womanhood was roused, Jude had held no mean part in her girlish dreams. He was the best of the St. Angé boyhood and Joyce had an instinctive relish for the best wherever she saw it. Whatever the future held she was not inclined to thrust Jude from it. In success or failure she would rather have him with her than against her. Not that she feared him--she had boundless belief in herself--but, hearts to the woman, scalps to the savage, are trophies not to be despised.
"I--I want to know what it means." Again Jude spoke, and this time a tone of command rang through the words.
The corners of Joyce's mouth twitched--she had a wonderfully expressive mouth. Suddenly she raised her eyes. They did not hold the expression Jude might have expected from her disturbed silence. His growing courage took a step back, but his passion rushed forward proportionately.
The witch-light danced in the steady glance she turned upon him; she threw her head back and her slim throat showed white and smooth in the lamp's glow.