l I saw you standing here. Oh, Jack,
there's such a lot I wish I could wipe out."

"It's wiped out," he said happily. "The slate's clean. Fair weather
didn't get us anywhere. It took a storm. Well, the storm's over."

She stirred uneasily in his arms.

"Haven't you got the least bit of resentment, Jack, for all this trouble
I've helped to bring about?" she faltered.

"Why, no" he said thoughtfully. "All you did was to touch the fireworks
off. And they might have started over anything. Lord no! put that idea
out of your head."

"I don't understand," she murmured. "I never have quite understood why
Monohan should attack you with such savage bitterness. That trouble he
started on the Tyee, then this criminal firing of the woods. I've had
hints, first from your sister, then from Linda. I didn't know you'd
clashed before. I'm not very clear on that yet. But you knew all the
time what he was. Why didn't you tell me, Jack?"

"Well, maybe I should have," Fyfe admitted. "But I couldn't very well.
Don't you see? He wasn't even an incident, until he bobbed up and
rescued you that day. I couldn't, after that, start in picking his
character to pieces as a mater of precaution. We had a sort of an armed
truce. He left me strictly alone. I'd trimmed his claws once or twice
already. I suppose he was acute enough to see an opportunity to get a
whack at me through you. You were just living from day to day, creating
a world of illusions for yourself, nourishing yourself with dreams,
smarting under a stifled regret for a lot you thought you'd passed up
for good. _He_ wasn't a factor, at first. When he did finally stir in
you an emotion I had failed to stir, it was too late for me to do or say
anything. If I'd tried, at that stage of the game, to show you your
idol's clay feet, you'd have despised me, as well as refused to believe.
I couldn't do anything but stand back and trust the real woman of you to
find out what a quicksand you were building your castle on. I purposely
refused to let you to, when you wanted to go away the first
time,--partly on the kid's account, partly because I could hardly bear
to let you go. Mostly because I wanted to make him boil over and show
his teeth, on the chance that you'd be able to size him up.

"You see, I knew him from the ground up. I knew that nothing would
afford him a keener pleasure than to take away from me a woman I cared
for, and that nothing would make him squirm more than for me to
chec