k-mate him. That day I cuffed him and choked him on the Point really
started him properly. After that, you--as something to be desired and
possessed--ran second to his feeling against me. He was bound to try and
play even, regardless of you. When he precipitated that row on the Tyee,
I knew it was going to be a fight for my financial life--for my own
life, if he ever got me foul. And it was not a thing I could talk about
to you, in your state of mind, then. You were through with me.
Regardless of him, you were getting farther and farther away from me. I
had a long time to realize that fully. You had a grudge against life,
and it was sort of crystallizing on me. You never kissed me once in all
those two years like you kissed me just now."

She pulled his head down and kissed him again.

"So that I wasn't restraining you with any hope for my own advantage,"
he went on. "There was the kid, and there was you. I wanted to put a
brake on you, to make you go slow. You're a complex individual, Stella.
Along with certain fixed, fundamental principles, you've got a streak of
divine madness in you, a capacity for reckless undertakings. You'd never
have married me if you hadn't. I trusted you absolutely. But, I was
afraid in spite of my faith. You had draped such an idealistic mantle
around Monohan. I wanted to rend that before it came to a final
separation between us. It worked out, because he couldn't resist trying
to take a crack at me when the notion seized him.

"So," he continued, after a pause, "you aren't responsible, and I've
never considered you responsible for any of this. It's between him and
me, and it's been shaping for years. Whenever our trails crossed there
was bound to be a clash. There's always been a natural personal
antagonism between us. It began to show when we were kids, you might
say. Monohan's nature is such that he can't acknowledge defeat, he can't
deny himself a gratification. He's a supreme egotist. He's always had
plenty of money, he's always had whatever he wanted, and it never
mattered to him how he gratified his desires.

"The first time we locked horns was in my last year at high school.
Monohan was a star athlete. I beat him in a pole vault. That irked him
so that he sulked and sneered, and generally made himself so insulting
that I slapped him. We fought, and I whipped him. I had a temper that I
hadn't learned to keep in hand those days, and I nearly killed him. I
had nothing but contempt for