wo who had not
ventured down to the creek when they heard the voice of a woman there.

Marion sat up indignantly. "Go on down the creek, why don't you?"

"Oh, this place suits me fine." Fred, having removed one shoe, turned
it upside down and shook out the sand, and began unlacing the other.

Marion waited stubbornly until he was pulling that shoe off, and then
she gathered up her cushions and fled, flushed and angry. She was
frequently angry with Fred, who never yielded an inch and never would
argue or cajole. She firmly believed that Fred would actually have
gone in swimming with her sitting there on the bank; he was just that
stubborn. For that she sometimes hated him--since no one detests
stubbornness so much as an obstinate person.

Fred looked after her, still smiling oddly because he had known so
well how to persuade her to go back to the house and help Kate. Fred
almost loved Marion Rose. He admitted to himself that he almost loved
her--which is going pretty far for a man like Fred Humphrey. But he
also admitted to himself that she could not make him happy, nor he
her. To make Marion happy he believed that he would need to have about
a million dollars to spend. To make him happy, Marion would need to
take a little more interest in home making and not so much interest in
beauty making. The frivolous vanity bag of hers, and her bland way of
using it, like the movie actresses, in public, served to check his
imagination before it actually began building air-castles wherein she
reigned the queen.

He could have loved her so faithfully if only she were a little
different! The nearest he came to building an air-castle was when he
was lying luxuriously in a shallow part of the pool, where the water
was not so cold.

"She'd be different, I believe--I'd make her different if I could
just have her to myself," he mused. "I'd take a lot of that
foolishness out of her in a little while, and I wouldn't have to be
rough with her, either. All she needs is a man she can't bluff!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

JACK SHOULD HAVE A HIDE-OUT

Kate, like the rest of the world, pretended to herself a good deal.
For instance, when she came into the mountains, she had hoped that
Fred and Marion would fall in love and get married. She felt that the
arrangement would be perfectly ideal in every way. Marion was such a
dear girl, so sweet-tempered and light-hearted; just the temperament
that Fred needed in a wife, to save him from bec