st Charlie
and then Jack--for the bare necessities of life. When there's mutual
affection, companionship, all those intimate interests that marriage is
supposed to imply, I daresay a woman gives full measure for all she
receives. If she doesn't, she's simply a sponge, clinging to a man for
what's in it. I couldn't bear that. You've been rather painfully frank;
so will I be. One unhappy marriage is quite enough for me. Looking back,
I can see that even if Walter Monohan hadn't stirred a feeling in me
which I don't deny,--but which I'm not nearly so sure of as I was some
time ago,--I'd have come to just this stage, anyway. I was drifting all
the time. My baby and the conventions, that reluctance most women have
to make a clean sweep of all the ties they've been schooled to think
unbreakable, kept me moving along the old grooves. It would have come
about a little more gradually, that's all. But I have broken away, and
I'm going to live my own life after a fashion, and I'm going to achieve
independence of some sort. I'm never going to be any man's mate again
until I'm sure of myself--and of him. There's my philosophy of life, as
simply as I can put it. I don't think you need to worry about me. Right
now I couldn't muster up the least shred of passion of any sort. I seem
to have felt so much since last summer, that I'm like a sponge that's
been squeezed dry."

"I don't blame you, dear," Linda said wistfully. "A woman's heart is a
queer thing, though. When you compare the two men--Oh, well, I know
Walter so thoroughly, and you don't. You couldn't ever have cared much
for Jack."

"That hasn't any bearing on it now," Stella answered. "I'm still his
wife, and I respect him, and I've got a stubborn sort of pride. There
won't be any divorce proceedings or any scandal. I'm free personally to
work out my own economic destiny. That, right now, is engrossing enough
for me."

Linda sat a minute, thoughtful.

"So you think my word for Walter Monohan's deviltry isn't worth much,"
she said. "Well, I could furnish plenty of details. But I don't think I
shall. Not because you'd be angry, but because I don't think you're
quite as blind as I believed. And I'm not a natural gossip. Aside from
that, he's quite too busy on Roaring Lake for it to mean any good. He
never gets active like that unless he has some personal axe to grind. In
this case, I can grasp his motive easily enough. Jack Fyfe may not have
said a word to you, but he certainl