It was this that disturbed his equanimity--the _woman_ of it, and the knowledge that his interference had been unsolicited and probably unnecessary.

And now that he had gone this far he found it not easy to recover his balance.

Who was this Joanne Gray?
he asked himself.
She was not ordinary--like the hundred other women who had gone on ahead of her to Tete Jaune Cache.

If she had been that, he would soon have been in his little shack on the shore of the river, hard at work.

He had planned work for himself that afternoon, and he was nettled to discover that his enthusiasm for the grand finale of a certain situation in his novel was gone.