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"Oh, he'd been drunk--he was drunk!" whispered Joan "He isn't to be

blaed--he

doesn't care What could I expect--standing there like a hussy

before hi?I nized me now--and I had no chance to tell him

why I'ood--

and true to him--if I couldn't tell him I'd--I'd shoot myself!"

Joan sobbed out the final words and then broke down And when the

spell had exercised its sway, leaving her limp and shaken and weak,

she was the better for it Slowly calmness returned so that she

could look at her wild and furious rush from the spot where she had

faced Ji in her collapse She

realized that if she had met Jim Cleve here in the dress in which

she had left home there would have been the same shock of surprise

and fear and love She owed part of that breakdown to the suspense

she had been under and then the suddenness of the itation, she felt that it had been natural--that if

she could only tell the truth to Ji, and all following it, bore treh all this wild experience she had learned

to love Jiht and her blind

pursuit, and then the anxiety, fear, pain, toil, and despair, she

would never have known her woman's heart and its capacity for love