of life.  When there’s mutual affection, companionship, all those intimate interests that marriage is supposed to imply, I daresay a woman gives full measure for all she receives.  If she doesn’t, she’s simply a sponge, clinging to a man for what’s in it.  I couldn’t bear that.  You’ve been rather painfully frank; so will I be.  One unhappy marriage is quite enough for me.  Looking back, I can see that even if Walter Monohan hadn’t stirred a feeling in me which I don’t deny,—­but which I’m not nearly so sure of as I was some time ago,—­I’d have come to just this stage, anyway.  I was drifting all the time.  My baby and the conventions, that reluctance most women have to make a clean sweep of all the ties they’ve been schooled to think unbreakable, kept me moving along the old grooves.  It would have come about a little more gradually, that’s all.  But I have broken away, and I’m going to live my own life after a fashion, and I’m going to achieve independence of some sort.  I’m never going to be any man’s mate again until I’m sure of myself—­and of him.  There’s my philosophy of life, as simply as I can put it.  I don’t think you need to worry about me.  Right now I couldn’t muster up the least shred of passion of any sort.  I seem to have felt so much since last summer, that I’m like a sponge that’s been squeezed dry.”

“I don’t blame you, dear,” Linda said wistfully.  “A woman’s heart is a queer thing, though.  When you compare the two men—­Oh, well, I know Walter so thoroughly, and you don’t.  You couldn’t ever have cared much for Jack.”

“That hasn’t any bearing on it now,” Stella answered.  “I’m still his wife, and I respect him, and I’ve got a stubborn sort of pride.  There won’t be any divorce proceedings or any scandal.  I’m free personally to work out my own economic destiny.  That, right now, is engrossing enough for me.”

Linda sat a minute, thoughtful.

“So you think my word for Walter Monohan’s deviltry isn’t worth much,” she said.  “Well, I could furnish plenty of details.  But I don’t think I shall.  Not because you’d be angry, but because I don’t think you’re quite as blind as I believed.  And I’m not a natural gossip.  Aside from that, he’s quite too busy on Roaring Lake for it to mean any good.  He never gets active like that unless he has some personal axe to grind.  In this case, I can grasp his motive easily enough.  Jack Fyfe may not have said a word to you, but he certainly knows Monohan.  They’ve clashed before, so I’ve been told.  Jack probably saw what was growing on you, and I don’t think he’d hesitate to tell Monohan to walk away around.  If he did,—­or if you definitely turned Monohan down; you see I’m rather in the dark,—­he’d go to any length to play even with.  Fyfe.  When Monohan wants anything, he looks upon it as his own; and when you wound his vanity, you’ve stabbed him in his most vital part.  He never rests then until he’s paid the score.  Father was always a little afraid of him.  I think that’s