or thought she recognized, certain dominant, primitive characteristics, and they did not excite her admiration.  Men admired him—­those who were not afraid of him.  If he had been of more polished clay, she could readily have grasped this attitude.  But in her eyes he was merely a rude, masterful man, uncommonly gifted with physical strength, dominating other rude, strong men by sheer brute force.  And she herself rather despised sheer brute force.  The iron hand should fitly be concealed beneath the velvet glove.

Yet in spite of the bold look in his eyes that always confused and irritated her, Fyfe had never singled her out for the slightest attention of the kind any man bestows upon an attractive woman.  Stella was no fool.  She knew that she was attractive, and she knew why.  She had been prepared to repulse, and there had been nothing to repulse.  Once during Charlie’s absence he had come in a rowboat, hailed her from the beach, and gone away without disembarking when she told him Benton was not back.  He was something of an enigma, she confessed to herself, after all.  Perhaps that was why he came so frequently into her mind.  Or perhaps, she told herself, there was so little on Roaring Lake to think about that one could not escape the personal element.  As if any one ever could.  As if life were made up of anything but the impinging of one personality upon another.  That was something Miss Stella Benton had yet to learn.  She was still mired in the rampant egotism of untried youth, as yet the sublime individualist.

That side of her suffered a distinct shock later in the evening.  When supper was over, the work done, and the loggers’ celebration was slowly subsiding in the bunkhouse, she told Charlie with blunt directness what she wanted to do.  With equally blunt directness he declared that he would not permit it.  Stella’s teeth came together with an angry little click.

“I’m of age, Charlie,” she said to him.  “It isn’t for you to say what you will or will not permit me to do.  I want that money of mine that you used—­and what I’ve earned.  God knows I have earned it.  I can’t stand this work, and I don’t intend to.  It isn’t work; it’s slavery.”

“But what can you do in town?” he countered.  “You haven’t the least idea what you’d be going up against, Stell.  You’ve never been away from home, and you’ve never had the least training at anything useful.  You’d be on your uppers in no time at all.  You wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance.”

“I have such a splendid chance here,” she retorted ironically.  “If I could get in any position where I’d be more likely to die of sheer stagnation, to say nothing of dirty drudgery, than in this forsaken hole, I’d like to know how.  I don’t think it’s possible.”

“You could be a whole lot worse off, if you only knew it,” Benton returned grumpily.  “If you haven’t got any sense about things, I have.  I know what a rotten hole Vancouver or any other seaport town is for a girl alone.  I won’t let you make any foolish break like that.  That’s flat.”