of explosion, and I'd rather have it that way--one amazed yelp
from our friends and the newspapers, and it's over.

"Meantime, you will receive an invitation to the wedding. I hope
you'll accept. You needn't have any compunctions about playing the
game. You will not encounter me, as I have my hands full here, and
I'm notorious in Vancouver for backing out of functions, anyway. It
is not imperative that you should do this. It's merely a safeguard
against a bomb from the Abbey fortress.

"Linda is troubled by a belief that upon small pretext they would be
very nasty, and she naturally doesn't want any friction with her
folks. They have certain vague but highly material ambitions for her
matrimonially, which she, a very sensible girl, doesn't subscribe
to. She's a very shrewd and practical young person, for all her
whole-hearted passion for your brother. I rather think she pretty
clearly guesses the breach in our rampart--not the original mistake
in our over-hasty plunge--but the wedge that divided us for good. If
she does, and I'm quite sure she does, she is certainly good stuff,
because she is most loyally your champion. I say that because
Charlie had a tendency this spring to carp at your desertion of
Roaring Lake. Things aren't going any too good with us, one way and
another, and of course he, not knowing the real reason of your
absence, couldn't understand why you stay away. I had to squelch
him, and Linda abetted me successfully. However, that's beside the
point. I hope I haven't irritated you. I'm such a dumb sort of brute
generally. I don't know what imp of prolixity got into my pen. I've
got it all off my chest now, or pretty near.

"J.H.F."

Stella sat thoughtfully gazing at the letter for a long time.

"I wonder?" she said aloud, and the sound of her own voice galvanized
her into action. She put on a coat and went out into the mellow spring
sunshine, and walked till the aimless straying of her feet carried her
to a little park that overlooked the far reach of the Sound and gave
westward on the snowy Olympics, thrusting hoary and aloof to a perfect
sky, like their brother peaks that ringed Roaring Lake. And all the time
her mind kept turning on a question whose asking was rooted neither in
fact nor necessity, an inquiry born of a sentiment she had never
expected to feel.

Should she go back to Jack Fyfe?