“What I said,” she began desperately.  “Wasn’t it plain enough?  It seems to me our life is going to be a nightmare from now on if we try to live it together.  I—­I’m sorry, but you know how I feel.  It may be unwise, but these things aren’t dictated by reason.  You know that.  If our emotions were guided by reason and expediency, we’d be altogether different.  Last night I was willing to go on and make the best of things.  To-day,—­especially after this,—­it looks impossible.  You’ll look at me, and guess what I’m thinking, and hate me.  And I’ll grow to hate you, because you’ll be little better than a jailer.  Oh, don’t you see that the way we’ll feel will make us utterly miserable?  Why should we stick together when no good can come of it?  You’ve been good to me.  I’ve appreciated that and liked you for it.  I’d like to be friends.  But I—­I’d hate you with a perfectly murderous hatred if you were always on the watch, always suspecting me, if you taunted me as you did a while ago.  I’m just as much a savage at heart as you are, Jack Fyfe.  I could gladly have killed you when you were jerking me about back yonder.”

“I wonder if you are, after all, a little more of a primitive being than I’ve supposed?”

Fyfe leaned toward her, staring fixedly into her eyes—­eyes that were bright with unshed tears.

“And I was holding the devil in me down back there, because I didn’t want to horrify you with anything like brutality,” he went on thoughtfully.  “You think I grinned and made a monkey of him because it pleased me to do that?  Why, I could have—­and ached to—­break him into little bits, to smash him up so that no one would ever take pleasure in looking at him again.  And I didn’t, simply and solely because I didn’t want to let you have even a glimpse of what I’m capable of when I get started.  I wonder if I made a mistake?  It was merely the reaction from letting him go scot-free that made me shake you so.  I wonder—­well, never mind.  Go on.”

“I think it’s better that I should go away,” Stella said.  “I want you to agree that I should; then there will be no talk or anything disagreeable from outside sources.  I’m strong, I can get on.  It’ll be a relief to have to work.  I won’t have to be the kitchen drudge Charlie made of me.  I’ve got my voice.  I’m quite sure I can capitalize that.  But I’ve got to go.  Anything’s better than this; anything that’s clean and decent.  I’d despise myself if I stayed on as your wife, feeling as I do.  It was a mistake in the beginning, our marriage.”

“Nevertheless,” Fyfe said slowly, “I’m afraid it’s a mistake you’ll have to abide by—­for a time.  All that you say may be true, although I don’t admit it myself.  Offhand, I’d say you were simply trying to welch on a fair bargain.  I’m not going to let you do it blindly, all wrought up to a pitch where you can scarcely think coherently.  If you are fully determined to break away from me, you owe it to us both to be sure of what you’re doing before you act.  I’m going to talk plain.  You can believe it and disdain it if you please.  If you were leaving me for a man, a real man, I think I could bring myself to make it easy for you and wish you luck.  But you’re not.  He’s—­”