ss Stella told him that
she could not stay, that feeling as she did, she despised herself for
unwilling acceptance of everything where she could give nothing in
return, that the original mistake of their marriage would never be
rectified by a perpetuation of that mistake.

"What's the use, Jack?" she finished. "You and I are so made that we
can't be neutral. We've got to be thoroughly in accord, or we have to
part. There's no chance for us to get back to the old way of living. I
don't want to; I can't. I could never be complaisant and agreeable
again. We might as well come to a full stop, and each go his own way."

She had braced herself for a clash of wills. There was none. Fyfe
listened to her, looked at her long and earnestly, and in the end made a
quick, impatient gesture with his hands.

"Your life's your own to make what you please of, now that the kid's no
longer a factor," he said quietly. "What do you want to do? Have you
made any plans?"

"I have to live, naturally," she replied. "Since I've got my voice back,
I feel sure I can turn that to account. I should like to go to Seattle
first and look around. It can be supposed I have gone visiting, until
one or the other of us takes a decisive legal step."

"That's simple enough," he returned, after a minute's reflection. "Well,
if it has to be, for God's sake let's get it over with."

And now it was over with. Fyfe remarked once that with them luckily it
was not a question of money. But for Stella it was indeed an economic
problem. When she left Roaring Lake, her private account contained over
two thousand dollars. Her last act in Vancouver was to re-deposit that
to her husband's credit. Only so did she feel that she could go free of
all obligation, clean-handed, without stultifying herself in her own
eyes. She had treasured as a keepsake the only money she had ever earned
in her life, her brother's check for two hundred and seventy dollars,
the wages of that sordid period in the cookhouse. She had it now. Two
hundred and seventy dollars capital. She hadn't sold herself for that.
She had given honest value, double and treble, in the sweat of her brow.
She was here now, in a five-dollar-a-week housekeeping room, foot-loose,
free as the wind. That was Fyfe's last word to her. He had come with
her to Seattle and waited patiently at a hotel until she found a place
to live. Then he had gone away without protest.

"Well, Stella," he had said, "I guess this is the