irresistible magnetic attraction, of love that leaped full-blown into
reality at the touch of a hand or the glance of an eye, she had always
viewed with distrust, holding them the weaknesses of weak, volatile
natures. But there was something about this man which had stirred her,
nothing that he said or did, merely some elusive, personal attribute.
She had never undergone any such experience, and she puzzled over it
now. A chance stranger, and his touch could make her pulse leap. It
filled her with astonished dismay.

Afterward, dry-clad and warm, sitting in her pet chair, Jack Junior
cooing at her from a nest among cushions on the floor, the natural
reaction set in, and she laughed at herself. When Fyfe came home, she
told him lightly of her rescue.

He said nothing at first, only sat drumming on his chair-arm, his eyes
steady on her.

"That might have cost you your life," he said at last. "Will you
remember not to drift offshore again?"

"I rather think I shall," she responded. "It wasn't a pleasant
experience."

"Monohan, eh?" he remarked after another interval. "So he's on Roaring
Lake again."

"Do you know him?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied briefly.

For a minute or so longer he sat there, his face wearing its habitual
impassiveness. Then he got up, kissed her with a queer sort of
intensity, and went put. Stella gazed after him, mildly surprised. It
wasn't quite in his usual manner.

CHAPTER XV

A RESURRECTION

It might have been a week or so later that Stella made a discovery which
profoundly affected the whole current of her thought. The long twilight
was just beginning. She was curled on the living-room floor, playing
with the baby. Fyfe and Charlie Benton sat by a window, smoking,
conversing, as they frequently did, upon certain phases of the timber
industry. A draft from an open window fluttered some sheet music down
off the piano rack, and Stella rescued it from Jack Junior's tiny,
clawing hands. Some of the Abbeys had been there the evening before. One
bit of music was a song Linda had tried to sing and given up because it
soared above her vocal range. Stella rose to put up the music. Without
any premeditated idea of playing, she sat down at the piano and began to
run over the accompaniment. She could play passably.

"That doesn't seem so very hard," she thought aloud. Benton turned at
sound of her words.

"Say, did you never get any part of your voice back, Stell?" he asked.
"I