ent that won't be too much of a
hardship on him. It's that--or a clean break in which you go your own
way, and I try to mother him to the best of my ability. You'll
understand sometime why I'm showing my teeth this way."

"You have everything on your side," she admitted dully, after a long
interval of silence. "I'm a fool. I admit it. Have things your way. But
it won't work, Jack. This flare-up between us will only smoulder. I
think you lay a little too much stress on Monohan. It isn't that I love
him so much as that I don't love you at all. I can live without
him--which I mean to do in any case--far easier than I can live with
you. It won't work."

"Don't worry," he replied. "You won't be annoyed by me in person. I'll
have my hands full elsewhere."

They rose and walked on to the house. On the porch Jack Junior was being
wheeled back and forth in his carriage. He lifted chubby arms to his
mother as she came up the steps. Stella carried him inside, hugging the
sturdy, blue-eyed mite close to her breast. She did not want to cry, but
she could not help it. It was as if she had been threatened with
irrevocable loss of that precious bit of her own flesh and blood. She
hugged him to her, whispering mother-talk, half-hysterical, wholly
tender.

Fyfe stood aside for a minute. Then he came up behind her and stood
resting one hand on the back of her chair.

"Stella."

"Yes."

"I got word from my sister and her husband in this morning's mail. They
will very likely be here next week for a three days' stay. Brace up.
Let's try and keep our skeleton from rattling while they're here. Will
you?"

"All right, Jack. I'll try."

He patted her tousled hair lightly and left the room. Stella looked
after him with a surge of mixed feeling. She told herself she hated him
and his dominant will that always beat her own down; she hated him for
his amazing strength and for his unvarying sureness of himself. And in
the same breath she found herself wondering if,--with their status
reversed,--Walter Monohan would be as patient, as gentle, as
self-controlled with a wife who openly acknowledged her affection for
another man. And still her heart cried out for Monohan. She flared hot
against the disparaging note, the unconcealed contempt Fyfe seemed to
have for him.

Yet in spite of her eager defence of him, there was something ugly about
that clash with Fyfe in the edge of the woods, something that jarred. It
wasn't spontaneous. She cou