But—­she had had a long time to think, to compare, to digest all that she knew of him, much that was subconscious impression rising late to the surface, a little that she heard from various sources.  The sum total gave her a man of rank passions, of rare and merciless finesse where his desires figured, a man who got what he wanted by whatever means most fitly served his need.  Greater than any craving to possess a woman would be the measure of his rancor against a man who humiliated him, thwarted him.  She could understand how a man like Monohan would hate a man like Jack Fyfe, would nurse and feed on the venom of his hate until setting a torch to Fyfe’s timber would be a likely enough counterstroke.

She shrank from the thought.  Yet it lingered until she felt guilty.  Though it made no material difference to her that Fyfe might or might not face ruin, she could not, before her own conscience, evade responsibility.  The powder might have been laid, but her folly had touched spark to the fuse, as she saw it.  That seared her like a pain far into the night.  For every crime a punishment; for every sin a penance.  Her world had taught her that.  She had never danced; she had only listened to the piper and longed to dance, as nature had fashioned her to do.  But the piper was sending his bill.  She surveyed it wearily, emotionally bankrupt, wondering in what coin of the soul she would have to pay.

CHAPTER XXIII

A RIDE BY NIGHT

Stella sang in the gilt ballroom of the Granada next afternoon, behind the footlights of a miniature stage, with the blinds drawn and a few hundred of Vancouver’s social elect critically, expectantly listening.  She sang her way straight into the heart of that audience with her opening number.  This was on Wednesday.  Friday she sang again, and Saturday afternoon.

When she came back to her room after that last concert, wearied with the effort of listening to chattering women and playing the gracious lady to an admiring contingent which insisted upon making her last appearance a social triumph, she found a letter forwarded from Seattle.  She slit the envelope.  A typewritten sheet enfolded a green slip,—­a check.  She looked at the figures, scarcely comprehending until she read the letter.

“We take pleasure in handing you herewith,” Mr. Lander wrote for the firm, “our check for nineteen thousand five hundred dollars, proceeds of oil stock sold as per your telegraphed instructions, less brokerage charges.  We sold same at par, and trust this will be satisfactory.”

She looked at the check again.  Nineteen thousand, five hundred—­payable to her order.  Two years ago such a sum would have lifted her to plutocratic heights, filled her with pleasurable excitement, innumerable anticipations.  Now it stirred her less than the three hundred dollars she had just received from the Granada Concert committee.  She had earned that, had given for it due measure of herself.  This other had come without effort, without expectation.  And less than she had ever needed money before did she now require such a sum.