swift, consecutive progress all the amazing turns
of her life since she first came to Roaring Lake. There was neither
method nor inquiry in this back-casting--merely a ceaseless, involuntary
activity of the brain.

A little after midnight when all the house was hushed, she went into the
adjoining room, cuddled Jack Junior into her arms, and took him to her
own bed. With his chubby face nestled against her breast, she lay there
fighting against that interminable, maddening buzzing in her brain. She
prayed for sleep, her nervous fingers stroking the silky, baby hair.

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH THERE IS A FURTHER CLASH

One can only suffer so much. Poignant feeling brings its own
anaesthetic. When Stella Fyfe fell into a troubled sleep that night, the
storm of her emotions had beaten her sorely. Morning brought its
physical reaction. She could see things clearly and calmly enough to
perceive that her love for Monohan was fraught with factors that must be
taken into account. All the world loves a lover, but her world did not
love lovers who kicked over the conventional traces. She had made a
niche for herself. There were ties she could not break lightly, and she
was not thinking of herself alone when she considered that, but of her
husband and Jack Junior, of Linda Abbey and Charlie Benton, of each and
every individual whose life touched more or less directly upon her own.

She had known always what a woman should do in such case, what she had
been taught a woman should do: grin, as Monohan had said, and take her
medicine. For her there was no alternative. Fyfe had made that clear.
But her heart cried out in rebellion against the necessity. To her,
trying to think logically, the most grievous phase of the doing was the
fact that nothing could ever be the same again. She could go on. Oh,
yes. She could dam up the wellspring of her impulses, walk steadfast
along the accustomed ways. But those ways would not be the old ones.
There would always be the skeleton at the feast. She would know it was
there, and Jack Fyfe would know, and she dreaded the fruits of that
knowledge, the bitterness and smothered resentment it would breed. But
it had to be. As she saw it, there was no choice.

She came down to breakfast calmly enough. It was nothing that could be
altered by heroics, by tears and wailings. Not that she was much given
to either. She had not whined when her brother made things so hard for
her that any refuge seeme