The hold of youth and beauty clutched the man's inflamed senses. The evening meal, which Joyce had mechanically prepared, had been partaken of--by Jude--until little but fragments was left.
A black shower, which had passed over St. Angé in the late afternoon, had changed the sultry heat to ominous chill. The wind among the pines sobbed dismally as if it were a human thing and could understand.
Jude got up and shut the door. It was quite dark outside, and the lamp flickered in the breeze.
At his action Joyce sprang from the chair, and the dull calm that had possessed her for the past day or so was shattered. Her eyes blazed, and the colour came and went in the stern, white face.
"Don't--do--that!" she panted, springing to the door and flinging it back.
"What in thunder is the matter with you?" Jude stepped aside. Something in this change and fury startled him.
"Don't shut--the--door, Jude. We--we--can't leave him out there alone in the cold. He's so little--our--baby!"
Jude had a moment of doubt as to how he should deal with this foolery. If he were quite sure it was just Joyce's nonsense--but perhaps she had gone crazy. The thought stayed him.
Then he considered that in either case he must get the upper hand, and at once. All depended upon that.
"Go and set down," he commanded, eyeing the girl as she stood in the open doorway. "You don't 'spose we're going to live with open doors, do you?"
There was mastery in the tone, and, to gain her end, the woman resorted to her only course.
"Just--for to-night, Jude--just a little way open. I'd choke if I--shut him away so soon--and he so little and--and--all."
Fear of what he did not understand roused in Jude a brutish desire to overcome this something that threatened. For a moment he decided to rush from the house and leave the thing to work out its own way; but second thought brought with it his plans, which must be set in motion at once.
This attitude of Joyce's was a new obstacle, but if he conquered her, he might overcome it. So by sheer force of weak will he strode over to the woman who defied him, even while she pleaded, and grasped her roughly by the shoulder.
In that touch Joyce recognized what all suppressed and deprived womanhood has always felt, and she recoiled to reconnoitre.