white or red, no matter,
to make eyes at. Her horizon was bounded by Roaring Lake and the mission
at Skookumchuck. She was therefore no mitigation of Stella's loneliness.

Nevertheless Stella resigned herself to make the best of it, and it
proved a poor best. She could not detach herself sufficiently from the
sordid realities to lose herself in day-dreaming. There was not a book
in the camp save some ten-cent sensations she found in the bunkhouse,
and these she had exhausted during Charlie's first absence. The uncommon
stillness of the camp oppressed her more than ever. Even the bluejays
and squirrels seemed to sense its abandonment, seemed to take her as
part of the inanimate fixtures, for they frisked and chattered about
with uncommon fearlessness. The lake lay dead gray, glassy as some great
irregular window in the crust of the earth. Only at rare intervals did
sail or smoke dot its surface, and then far offshore. The woods stood
breathless in the autumn sun. It was like being entombed. And there
would be a long stretch of it, with only a recurrence of that deadly
grind of kitchen work when the loggers came home again.

Some time during the next forenoon she went southerly along the lake
shore on foot without object or destination, merely to satisfy in some
measure the restless craving for action. Colorful turns of life, the
more or less engrossing contact of various personalities, some new thing
to be done, seen, admired, discussed, had been a part of her existence
ever since she could remember. None of this touched her now. A dead
weight of monotony rode her hard. There was the furtive wild life of the
forest, the light of sun and sky, and the banked green of the forest
that masked the steep granite slopes. She appreciated beauty, craved it
indeed, but she could not satisfy her being with scenic effects alone.
She craved, without being wholly aware of it, or altogether admitting it
to herself, some human distraction in all that majestic solitude.

It was forthcoming. When she returned to camp at two o'clock, driven in
by hunger, Jack Fyfe sat on the doorstep.

"How-de-do. I've come to bring you over to my place," he announced quite
casually.

"Thanks. I've already declined one pressing invitation to that effect,"
Stella returned drily. His matter-of-fact assurance rather nettled her.

"A woman always has the privilege of changing her mind," Fyfe smiled.
"Charlie is going to be at my camp for at least three wee