r had kindled in him made him look at women out of different eyes.
Desire had been revealed to him not as something casual, but as an
imperative. As if nature had pulled the blinkers off his eyes and shown
him his mate and the aim and object and law and fiery urge of the mating
instinct all in one blinding flash.

He lay hot and fretful, cursing himself for a fool, yet unable to find
ease, wondering dully if Betty Gower must also suffer as he should, or
if it were only an innocent, piquant game that Betty played. Always in
the background of his mind lurked a vision of her father, sitting back
complacently, fat, smug, plump hands on a well-rounded stomach,
chuckling a brutal satisfaction over another MacRae beaten.

MacRae wakened from an uneasy sleep at ten o'clock. He rose and dressed,
got his breakfast, went out on the streets. But Vancouver had all at
once grown insufferable. The swarming streets irritated him. He
smoldered inside, and he laid it to the stir and bustle and noise. He
conceived himself to crave hushed places and solitude, where he could
sit and think.

By mid-afternoon he was far out in the Gulf of Georgia, aboard a
coasting steamer sailing for island ports. If it occurred to him that he
was merely running away from temptation, he did not admit the fact.

CHAPTER XV

Hearts are Not Always Trumps

If MacRae reckoned on tranquillity in his island seclusion he failed in
his reckoning. A man may fly from temptation, run from a threatening
danger, but he cannot run away from himself. He could not inhibit
thought, reflection, surges of emotion generated mysteriously within
himself.

He did his best. He sought relief in action. There were a great many
things about his freehold upon which he bestowed feverish labor for a
time. He cleared away all the underbrush to the outer limits of his
shrunken heritage. He built a new enclosing fence of neatly split cedar,
installed a pressure system of water in the old house.

"You goin' to get married?" old Peter inquired artlessly one day. "You
got all the symptoms--buzzin' around in your nest like a bumblebee."

And Dolly smiled her slow, enigmatic smile.

Whereupon MacRae abandoned his industry and went off to Blackfish Sound
with Vincent in the _Bluebird_. The salmon run was long over, but the
coastal waters still yielded a supply of edible fish. There were always
a few spring salmon to be taken here and there. Ling, red and rock cod
knew no season