not think that I can explain away--just now. I have come to prove or
disprove his death. If he is alive----"

For the first time she betrayed the struggle she was making against some
powerful emotion which she was fighting to repress. Her face had paled. She
stopped herself with a quick breath, as if knowing that she had already
gone too far.

"I guess I understand," said Aldous. "For some reason your anxiety is not
that you will find him dead, Ladygray, but that you may find him alive."

"Yes--yes, that is it. But you must not urge me farther. It is a terrible
thing to say. You will think I am not a woman, but a fiend. And I am your
guest. You have invited me to supper. And--the potatoes are ready, and
there is no fire!"

She had forced a smile back to her lips. John Aldous whirled toward the
door.

"I will have the partridges in two seconds!" he cried. "I dropped them when
the horses went through the rapids."

The oppressive and crushing effect of Joanne's first mention of a husband
was gone. He made no effort to explain or analyze the two sudden changes
that swept over him. He accepted them as facts, and that was all. Where a
few moments before there had been the leaden grip of something that seemed
to be physically choking him, there was now again the strange buoyancy with
which he had gone to the Otto tent. He began to whistle as he went to the
river's edge. He was whistling when he returned, the two birds in his hand.
Joanne was waiting for him in the door. Again her face was a faintly tinted