igible man. It didn't matter a hang about his essential qualities so
long as he had money and an assured social position."

"Forget that," Charlie counseled slangily. "I have all the essential
qualities, and I'll have the money and social position too; you watch my
smoke."

"Conceited ninny," Linda smiled. But there was no reproof in her tone,
only pure comradeship and affection, which Benton returned so openly and
unaffectedly that Stella got up and left them with a pang of envy, a
dull little ache in her heart. She had missed that. It had passed her
by, that clean, spontaneous fusing of two personalities in the biggest
passion life holds. Marriage and motherhood she had known, not as the
flowering of love, not as an eager fulfilling of her natural destiny,
but as something extraneous, an avenue of escape from an irksomeness of
living, a weariness with sordid things, which she knew now had obsessed
her out of all proportion to their reality. She had never seen that
tenderness glow in the eyes of a mating pair that she did not envy them,
that she did not feel herself hopelessly defrauded of her woman's
heritage.

She went up to her room, moody, full of bitterness, and walked the
thick-carpeted floor, the restlessness of her chafing spirit seeking the
outlet of action.

"Thank the Lord I've got something to do, something that's worth doing,"
she whispered savagely. "If I can't have what I want, I can make my life
embrace something more than just food and clothes and social trifling.
If I had to sit and wait for each day to bring what it would, I believe
I'd go clean mad."

A maid interrupted these self-communings to say that some one had called
her over the telephone, and Stella went down to the library. She wasn't
prepared for the voice that came over the line, but she recognized it
instantly as Fyfe's.

"Listen, Stella," he said. "I'm sorry this has happened, but I can't
very well avoid it now, without causing comment. I had no choice about
coming to Vancouver. It was a business matter I couldn't neglect. And as
luck would have it, Abbey ran into me as I got off the train. On account
of your being there, of course, he insisted that I come out for dinner.
It'll look queer if I don't, as I can't possibly get a return train for
the Springs before nine-thirty this evening. I accepted without
stuttering rather than leave any chance for the impression that I wanted
to avoid you. Now, here's how I propose to fix it. I'