of his body, just as the deliberate immobility of his face screened the play of his feelings.  Often Stella found herself staring at him, fruitlessly wondering what manner of thought and feeling that repression overlaid.  Sometimes a tricksy, half-provoked desire to break through the barricade of his stoicism tempted her.  She told herself that she ought to be thankful for his aloofness, his acquiescence in things as they stood.  Yet there were times when she would almost have welcomed an outburst, a storm, anything rather than that deadly chill, enduring day after day.  He seldom spoke to her now except of most matter-of-fact things.  He played his part like a gentleman before others, but alone with her he withdrew into his shell.

Stella was sitting back in the shadow, still studying him, measuring him in spite of herself by the Monohan yardstick.  There wasn’t much basis for comparison.  It wasn’t a question of comparison; the two men stood apart, distinctive, in every attribute.  The qualities in Fyfe that she understood and appreciated, she beheld glorified in Monohan.  Yet it was not, after all, a question of qualities.  It was something more subtle, something of the heart which defied logical analysis.

Fyfe had never been able to set her pulse dancing.  She had never craved physical nearness to him, so that she ached with the poignancy of that craving.  She had been passively contented with him, that was all.  And Monohan had swept across her horizon like a flame.  Why couldn’t Jack Fyfe have inspired in her that headlong sort of passion?  She smiled hopelessly.  The tears were very close to her eyes.  She loved Monohan; Monohan loved her.  Fyfe loved her in his deliberate, repressed fashion and possessed her, according to the matrimonial design.  And although now his possession was a hollow mockery, he would never give her up—­not to Walter Monohan.  She had that fatalistic conviction.

How would it end in the long run?

She leaned forward to speak.  Words quivered on her lips.  But as she struggled to shape them to utterance, the blast of a boat whistle came screaming up from the water, near and shrill and imperative.

Fyfe came out of his chair like a shot.  He landed poised on his feet, lips drawn apart, hands clenched.  He held that pose for an instant, then relaxed, his breath coming with a quick sigh.

Stella stared at him.  Nerves!  She knew the symptoms too well.  Nerves at terrible tension in that big, splendid body.  A slight quiver seemed to run over him.  Then he was erect and calmly himself again, standing in a listening attitude.

“That’s the Panther?” he said.  “Pulling in to the Waterbug’s landing.  Did I startle you when I bounced up like a cougar, Stella?” he asked, with a wry smile.  “I guess I was half asleep.  That whistle jolted me.”

Stella glanced out the shaded window.

“Some one’s coming up from the float with a lantern,” she said.  “Is there—­is there likely to be anything wrong, Jack?”