ed to gross material things. Life, she told herself pensively,
ought to mean something more than ease and good clothes, but what more
she was chary of putting into concrete form. It hadn't meant much more
than that for her, so far. She was only beginning to recognize the
flinty facts of existence. She saw now that for her there lay open only
two paths to food and clothing: one in which, lacking all training, she
must earn her bread by daily toil, the other leading to marriage. That,
she would have admitted, was a woman's natural destiny, but one didn't
pick a husband or lover as one chose a gown or a hat. One went along
living, and the thing happened. Chance ruled there, she believed. The
morality of her class prevented her from prying into this question of
mating with anything like critical consideration. It was only to be
thought about sentimentally, and it was easy for her to so think. Within
her sound and vigorous body all the heritage of natural human impulses
bubbled warmly, but she recognized neither their source nor their
ultimate fruits.

Often when Charlie was holding forth in his accustomed vein, she
wondered what Jack Fyfe thought about it, what he masked behind his
brief sentences or slow smile. Latterly her feeling about him, that
involuntary bracing and stiffening of herself against his personality,
left her. Fyfe seemed to be more or less self-conscious of her presence
as a guest in his house. His manner toward her remained always casual,
as if she were a man, and there was no question of sex attraction or
masculine reaction to it between them. She liked him better for that;
and she did admire his wonderful strength, the tremendous power invested
in his magnificent body, just as she would have admired a tiger, without
caring to fondle the beast.

Altogether she spent a tolerably pleasant three weeks. Autumn's gorgeous
paintbrush laid wonderful coloring upon the maple and alder and birch
that lined the lake shore. The fall run of the salmon was on, and every
stream was packed with the silver horde, threshing through shoal and
rapid to reach the spawning ground before they died. Off every creek
mouth and all along the lake the seal followed to prey on the salmon,
and sea-trout and lakers alike swarmed to the spawning beds to feed upon
the roe. The days shortened. Sometimes a fine rain would drizzle for
hours on end, and when it would clear, the saw-toothed ranges flanking
the lake would stand out all fres