"I dropped them when the horses went through the rapids." The oppressive and crushing effect of Joanne's first mention of a husband was gone.

He made no effort to explain or analyze the two sudden changes that swept over him.

He accepted them as facts, and that was all.

Where a few moments before there had been the leaden grip of something that seemed to be physically choking him, there was now again the strange buoyancy with which he had gone to the Otto tent.

He began to whistle as he went to the river's edge.