“Can’t we leave him out of it?” she demanded.  “I want to get away from you both.  Can you understand that?  It doesn’t help you any to pick him to pieces.”

“No, but it might help you, if I could rip off that swathing of idealization you’ve wrapped around him,” Fyfe observed patiently.  “It’s not a job I have much stomach for however, even if you were willing to let me try.  But to come back.  You’ve got to stick it out with me, Stella.  You’ll hate me for the constraint, I suppose.  But until—­until things shape up differently—­you’ll understand what I’m talking about by and by, I think—­you’ve got to abide by the bargain you made with me.  I couldn’t force you to stay, I know.  But there’s one hold you can’t break—­not if I know you at all.”

“What is that?” she asked icily.

“The kid’s,” he murmured.

Stella buried her face in her hands for a minute.

“I’d forgotten—­I’d forgotten,” she whispered.

“You understand, don’t you?” he said hesitatingly.  “If you leave—­I keep our boy.”

“Oh, you’re devilish—­to use a club like that,” she cried.  “You know I wouldn’t part from my baby—­the only thing I’ve got that’s worth having.”

“He’s worth something to me too,” Fyfe muttered.  “A lot more than you think, maybe.  I’m not trying to club you.  There’s nothing in it for me.  But for him; well, he needs you.  It isn’t his fault he’s here, or that you’re unhappy.  I’ve got to protect him, see that he gets a fair shake.  I can’t see anything to it but for you to go on being Mrs. Jack Fyfe until such time as you get back to a normal poise.  Then it will be time enough to try and work out some arrangement that won’t be too much of a hardship on him.  It’s that—­or a clean break in which you go your own way, and I try to mother him to the best of my ability.  You’ll understand sometime why I’m showing my teeth this way.”

“You have everything on your side,” she admitted dully, after a long interval of silence.  “I’m a fool.  I admit it.  Have things your way.  But it won’t work, Jack.  This flare-up between us will only smoulder.  I think you lay a little too much stress on Monohan.  It isn’t that I love him so much as that I don’t love you at all.  I can live without him—­which I mean to do in any case—­far easier than I can live with you.  It won’t work.”

“Don’t worry,” he replied.  “You won’t be annoyed by me in person.  I’ll have my hands full elsewhere.”

They rose and walked on to the house.  On the porch Jack Junior was being wheeled back and forth in his carriage.  He lifted chubby arms to his mother as she came up the steps.  Stella carried him inside, hugging the sturdy, blue-eyed mite close to her breast.  She did not want to cry, but she could not help it.  It was as if she had been threatened with irrevocable loss of that precious bit of her own flesh and blood.  She hugged him to her, whispering mother-talk, half-hysterical, wholly tender.