The Two-Bar Brand - Chapter 16 The Tall Child

So now she planned and worked and grew beautiful with work and
planning, while Prosper curbed his passion and worked, too, and his
instruments were delicate and deadly and his plans made no account of
hers. Every word he read to her, every note he played for her, had its
calculated effect. He worked on her subconsciousness, undermining her
path, and at nights and in her sleep she grew aware of him.

But even now, in his cool and passionate heart there were moments of
reaction, one at last that came near to wrecking his purpose.

"Your clothes are about done for, Joan," Prosper laughed one morning,
watching her belt in her tattered shirt; "you'll soon look like
Cophetua's beggar maid."

"I'm not quite barefoot yet." She held up a cracked boot.

"Joan--" He hesitated an instant, then got up from his desk, walked to
a window, and looked out at the bright morning. The lake was ruffled
with wind, the firs tossed, there were patches of brown-needled earth
under his window; his eyes were startled by a strip of green where
tiny yellow flowers trod on the very edge of the melting drift. The
window was open to soft, tingling air that smelt of snow and of sun,
of pines, of growing grass, of sap, of little leaf-buds. The birds
were in loud chorus. For several minutes Prosper stared and listened.