In the early dusk of evening they arrived at Tête Jaune. Aldous waited until the car had emptied itself before he rose from his seat. Joanne's hand clutched at his arm as they walked down the aisle. He felt the fierce pressure of her fingers in his flesh. On the car platform they paused for a moment, and he felt her throbbing beside him. She had taken her hand from his arm, and he turned suddenly. She had raised her veil. Her face was dead white. And she was staring out over the sea of faces under them in a strange questing way, and her breath came from between her slightly parted lips as if she had been running. Amazed for the moment, John Aldous did not move. Somewhere in that crowd _Joanne expected to find a face she knew!_ The truth struck him dumb--made him inert and lifeless. He, too, stared as if in a trance. And then, suddenly, every drop of blood in his body blazed into fierce life.
In the glow of one of the station lamps stood a group of men. The faces of all were turned toward them. One he recognized--a bloated, leering face grinning devilishly at them. It was Quade!
A low, frightened cry broke from Joanne's lips, and he knew that she, too, had seen him. But it was not Quade that she had looked for. It was not his face that she had expected to see nor because of him that she had lifted her veil for the mob!
He stepped down from the car and gave her his hand. Her fingers clutched his convulsively. And they were cold as the fingers of the dead.
A moment later some one came surging through the crowd, and called Aldous by name. It was Blackton. His thin, genial face with its little spiked moustache rose above the sea of heads about him, and as he came he grinned a welcome.
"A beastly mob!" he exclaimed, as he gripped his friend's hand. "I'm sorry I couldn't bring my wife nearer than the back platform."
Aldous turned to Joanne. He was still half in a daze. His heart was choking him with its swift and excited beating. Even as he introduced her to Blackton the voice kept crying in his brain that she had expected to find some one in this crowd whom she knew. For a space it was as if the Joanne whom he had known had slipped away from him. She had told him about the grave, but this other she had kept from him. Something that was almost anger surged up in him. His face bore marks of the strain as he watched her greet Blackton. In an instant, it seemed to him, she had regained a part of her composure. Blackton saw nothing but the haggard lines about her eyes and the deep pallor in her face, which he ascribed to fatigue.