hear Jack Fyfe come in. She did not dream he was there,
until she felt his hand gently on her shoulder and looked up. And so
deep was her despondency, so keen the unassuaged craving for some human
sympathy, some measure of understanding, that she made no effort to
remove his hand. She was in too deep a spiritual quagmire to refuse any
sort of aid, too deeply moved to indulge in analytical self-fathoming.
She had a dim sense of being oddly comforted by his presence, as if she,
afloat on uncharted seas, saw suddenly near at hand a safe anchorage and
welcoming hands. Afterward she recalled that. As it was, she looked up
at Fyfe and hid her wet face in her hands again. He stood silent a few
seconds. When he did speak there was a peculiar hesitation in his
voice.

"What is it?" he said softly. "What's the trouble now?"

Briefly she told him, the barriers of her habitual reserve swept aside
before the essentially human need to share a burden that has grown too
great to bear alone.

"Oh, hell," Fyfe grunted, when she had finished. "This isn't any place
for you at all."

He slid his arm across her shoulders and tilted her face with his other
hand so that her eyes met his. And she felt no desire to draw away or
any of that old instinct to be on her guard against him. For all she
knew--indeed, by all she had been told--Jack Fyfe was tarred with the
same stick as her brother, but she had no thought of resisting him, no
feeling of repulsion.

"Will you marry me, Stella?" he asked evenly. "I can free you from this
sort of thing forever."

"How can I?" she returned. "I don't want to marry anybody. I don't love
you. I'm not even sure I like you. I'm too miserable to think, even. I'm
afraid to take a step like that. I should think you would be too."

He shook his head.

"I've thought a lot about it lately," he said. "It hasn't occurred to me
to be afraid of how it may turn out. Why borrow trouble when there's
plenty at hand? I don't care whether you love me or not, right now. You
couldn't possibly be any worse off as my wife, could you?"

"No," she admitted. "I don't see how I could."

"Take a chance then," he urged. "I'll make a fair bargain with you. I'll
make life as pleasant for you as I can. You'll live pretty much as
you've been brought up to live, so far as money goes. The rest we'll
have to work out for ourselves. I won't ask you to pretend anything you
don't feel. You'll play fair, because that's the way you're
m