because I have always believed that Woman was the one thing which God came nearest to creating perfect.  I believe they should be perfect.  And because they have not quite that perfection which should be theirs I have driven the cold facts home as hard as I could.  I have been a fool and an iconoclast instead of a builder.  This confession to you is proof that you have brought me face to face with the greatest adventure of all.”

The colour in her cheeks had centred in two bright spots.  Her lips formed words which came slowly, strangely.

“I guess—­I understand,” she said.  “Perhaps I, too, would have been that kind of an iconoclast—­if I could have put the things I have thought into written words.”  She drew a deep breath, and went on, her eyes full upon him, speaking as if out of a dream.  “The Great Adventure—­for you.  Yes; and perhaps for both.”

Her hands were drawn tightly to her breast.  Something about her as she stood there, her back to the table, drew John Aldous to her side, forced the question from his lips:  “Tell me, Ladygray—­why are you going to Tete Jaune?”

In that same strange way, as if her lips were framing words beyond their power to control, she answered: 

“I am going—­to find—­my husband.”

CHAPTER VI

Silent, his head bowed a little, John Aldous stood before her after those last words.  A slight noise outside gave him the pretext to turn to the door.  She was going to Tete Jaune—­to find her husband!  He had not expected that.  For a breath, as he looked out toward the bush, his mind was in a strange daze.  A dozen times she had given him to understand there was no husband, father, or brother waiting for her at the rail-end.  She had told him that she was alone—­without friends.  And now, like a confession, those words had come strangely from her lips.

What he had heard was one of Otto’s pack-horses coming down to drink.  He turned toward her again.

Joanne stood with her back still to the table.  She had slipped a hand into the front of her dress and had drawn forth a long thick envelope.  As she opened it, Aldous saw that it contained banknotes.  From among these she picked out a bit of paper and offered it to him.

“That will explain—­partly,” she said.

It was a newspaper clipping, worn and faded, with a date two years old.  It had apparently been cut from an English paper, and told briefly of the tragic death of Mortimer FitzHugh, son of a prominent Devonshire family, who had lost his life while on a hunting trip in the British Columbia Wilds.

“He was my husband,” said Joanne, as Aldous finished.  “Until six months ago I had no reason to believe that the statement in the paper was not true.  Then—­an acquaintance came out here hunting.  He returned with a strange story.  He declared that he had seen Mr. FitzHugh alive.  Now you know why I am here.  I had not meant to tell you.  It places me in a light which I do not think that I can explain away—­just now.  I have come to prove or disprove his death.  If he is alive——­”