strips of bacon with
the long-handled fork.

"There you are," he said. "I don't know either. We'd start even, then,
for the sake of argument. No, I guess we wouldn't either, because you're
the only woman I've run across so far with whom I could calmly
contemplate spending the rest of my life in close contact. That's a
fact. To me it's a highly important fact. You don't happen to have any
such feeling about me, eh?"

"No. I hadn't even thought of you in that way," Stella answered
truthfully.

"You want to think about me," he said calmly. "You want to think about
me from every possible angle, because I'm going to come back and ask you
this same question every once in a while, so long as you're in reach and
doing this dirty work for a thankless boss. You want to think of me as a
possible refuge from a lot of disagreeable things. I'd like to have you
to chum with, and I'd like to have some incentive to put a big white
bungalow on that old foundation for us two," he smiled. "I'll never do
it for myself alone. Go on. Take a gambling chance and marry me, Stella.
Say yes, and say it now."

But she shook her head resolutely, and as Katy John came in just then,
Fyfe took his foot off the stove and went out of the kitchen. He threw a
glance over his shoulder at Stella, a broad smile, as if to say that he
harbored no grudge, and nursed no wound in his vanity because she would
have none of him.

Katy rang the breakfast gong. Five minutes later the tattoo of knives
and forks and spoons told of appetites in process of appeasement.
Charlie came into the kitchen in the midst of this, bearing certain
unmistakable signs. His eyes were inflamed, his cheeks still bearing the
flush of liquor. His demeanor was that of a man suffering an intolerable
headache and correspondingly short-tempered. Stella barely spoke to him.
It was bad enough for a man to make a beast of himself with whisky, but
far worse was his gambling streak. There were so many little ways in
which she could have eased things with a few dollars; yet he always
grumbled when she spoke of money, always put her off with promises to be
redeemed when business got better.

Stella watched him bathe his head copiously in cold water and then seat
himself at the long table, trying to force food upon an aggrieved and
rebellious stomach. Gradually a flood of recklessness welled up in her
breast.

"For two pins I would marry Jack Fyfe," she told herself savagely.
"_Anything_ would