“Forget that,” Charlie counseled slangily.  “I have all the essential qualities, and I’ll have the money and social position too; you watch my smoke.”

“Conceited ninny,” Linda smiled.  But there was no reproof in her tone, only pure comradeship and affection, which Benton returned so openly and unaffectedly that Stella got up and left them with a pang of envy, a dull little ache in her heart.  She had missed that.  It had passed her by, that clean, spontaneous fusing of two personalities in the biggest passion life holds.  Marriage and motherhood she had known, not as the flowering of love, not as an eager fulfilling of her natural destiny, but as something extraneous, an avenue of escape from an irksomeness of living, a weariness with sordid things, which she knew now had obsessed her out of all proportion to their reality.  She had never seen that tenderness glow in the eyes of a mating pair that she did not envy them, that she did not feel herself hopelessly defrauded of her woman’s heritage.

She went up to her room, moody, full of bitterness, and walked the thick-carpeted floor, the restlessness of her chafing spirit seeking the outlet of action.

“Thank the Lord I’ve got something to do, something that’s worth doing,” she whispered savagely.  “If I can’t have what I want, I can make my life embrace something more than just food and clothes and social trifling.  If I had to sit and wait for each day to bring what it would, I believe I’d go clean mad.”

A maid interrupted these self-communings to say that some one had called her over the telephone, and Stella went down to the library.  She wasn’t prepared for the voice that came over the line, but she recognized it instantly as Fyfe’s.

“Listen, Stella,” he said.  “I’m sorry this has happened, but I can’t very well avoid it now, without causing comment.  I had no choice about coming to Vancouver.  It was a business matter I couldn’t neglect.  And as luck would have it, Abbey ran into me as I got off the train.  On account of your being there, of course, he insisted that I come out for dinner.  It’ll look queer if I don’t, as I can’t possibly get a return train for the Springs before nine-thirty this evening.  I accepted without stuttering rather than leave any chance for the impression that I wanted to avoid you.  Now, here’s how I propose to fix it.  I’ll come out about two-thirty and pay a hurry-up five-minute call.  Then I’ll excuse myself to Mrs. Abbey for inability to join them at dinner—­press of important business takes me to Victoria and so forth.  That’ll satisfy the conventions and let us both out.  I called you so you won’t be taken by surprise.  Do you mind?”

“Of course not,” she answered instantly.  “Why should I?”

There was a momentary silence.

“Well,” he said at last, “I didn’t know how you’d feel about it.  Anyway, it will only be for a few minutes, and it’s unlikely to happen again.”