“Why, no” he said thoughtfully.  “All you did was to touch the fireworks off.  And they might have started over anything.  Lord no! put that idea out of your head.”

“I don’t understand,” she murmured.  “I never have quite understood why Monohan should attack you with such savage bitterness.  That trouble he started on the Tyee, then this criminal firing of the woods.  I’ve had hints, first from your sister, then from Linda.  I didn’t know you’d clashed before.  I’m not very clear on that yet.  But you knew all the time what he was.  Why didn’t you tell me, Jack?”

“Well, maybe I should have,” Fyfe admitted.  “But I couldn’t very well.  Don’t you see?  He wasn’t even an incident, until he bobbed up and rescued you that day.  I couldn’t, after that, start in picking his character to pieces as a mater of precaution.  We had a sort of an armed truce.  He left me strictly alone.  I’d trimmed his claws once or twice already.  I suppose he was acute enough to see an opportunity to get a whack at me through you.  You were just living from day to day, creating a world of illusions for yourself, nourishing yourself with dreams, smarting under a stifled regret for a lot you thought you’d passed up for good. He wasn’t a factor, at first.  When he did finally stir in you an emotion I had failed to stir, it was too late for me to do or say anything.  If I’d tried, at that stage of the game, to show you your idol’s clay feet, you’d have despised me, as well as refused to believe.  I couldn’t do anything but stand back and trust the real woman of you to find out what a quicksand you were building your castle on.  I purposely refused to let you to, when you wanted to go away the first time,—­partly on the kid’s account, partly because I could hardly bear to let you go.  Mostly because I wanted to make him boil over and show his teeth, on the chance that you’d be able to size him up.

“You see, I knew him from the ground up.  I knew that nothing would afford him a keener pleasure than to take away from me a woman I cared for, and that nothing would make him squirm more than for me to check-mate him.  That day I cuffed him and choked him on the Point really started him properly.  After that, you—­as something to be desired and possessed—­ran second to his feeling against me.  He was bound to try and play even, regardless of you.  When he precipitated that row on the Tyee, I knew it was going to be a fight for my financial life—­for my own life, if he ever got me foul.  And it was not a thing I could talk about to you, in your state of mind, then.  You were through with me.  Regardless of him, you were getting farther and farther away from me.  I had a long time to realize that fully.  You had a grudge against life, and it was sort of crystallizing on me.  You never kissed me once in all those two years like you kissed me just now.”

She pulled his head down and kissed him again.