“Did you leave any sweethearts over there at Hoadley?” he asked, after a silence.
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“A whole campful,” she replied, with a laugh, “but admirers is a better name for them.”
“Then there's no one fellow?”
“Hardly—yet.”
“How would you like being kept here in this lonesome place for—well, say for ever?”
“I wouldn't like that,” replied Joan. “I'd like this—camping out like this now—if my folks only knew I am alive and well and safe. I love lonely, dreamy places. I've dreamed of being in just such a one as this. It seems so far away here—so shut in by the walls and the blackness. So silent and sweet! I love the stars. They speak to me. And the wind in the spruces. Hear it.... Very low, mournful! That whispers to me—to-morrow I'd like it here if I had no worry. I've never grown up yet. I explore and climb trees and hunt for little birds and rabbits—young things just born, all fuzzy and sweet, frightened, piping or squealing for their mothers. But I won't touch one for worlds. I simply can't hurt anything. I can't spur my horse or beat him. Oh, I HATE pain!”
“You're a strange girl to live out here on this border,” he said.
“I'm no different from other girls. You don't know girls.”
“I knew one pretty well. She put a rope round my neck,” he replied, grimly.
“A rope!”
“Yes, I mean a halter, a hangman's noose. But I balked her!”
“Oh!... A good girl?”
“Bad! Bad to the core of her black heart—bad as I am!” he exclaimed, with fierce, low passion.
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