, would have recoiled from him,
viewed him with wholly distrustful eyes.

But he did nothing of the sort. He was a friend, or at least he became
so. Inevitably they were thrown much together. There was a continual
informal running back and forth between Fyfe's place and Abbey's.
Monohan was a lily of the field, although it was common knowledge on
Roaring Lake that he was a heavy stock-holder in the Abbey-Monohan
combination. At any rate, he was holidaying on the lake that summer.
There had grown up a genuine intimacy between Linda and Stella. There
were always people at the Abbeys'; sometimes a few guests at the Fyfe
bungalow. Stella's marvellous voice served to heighten her popularity.
The net result of it all was that in the following three months source
three days went by that she did not converse with Monohan.

She could not help making comparisons between the two men. They stood
out in marked contrast, in manner, physique, in everything. Where Fyfe
was reserved almost to taciturnity, impassive-featured, save for that
whimsical gleam that was never wholly absent from his keen blue eyes,
Monohan talked with facile ease, with wonderful expressiveness of face.
He was a finished product of courteous generations. Moreover, he had
been everywhere, done a little of everything, acquired in his manner
something of the versatility of his experience. Physically he was fit as
any logger in the camps, a big, active-bodied, clear-eyed, ruddy man.

What it was about him that stirred her so, Stella could never determine.
She knew beyond peradventure that he had that power. He had the gift of
quick, sympathetic perception,--but so too had Jack Fyfe, she reminded
herself. Yet no tone of Jack Fyfe's voice could raise a flutter in her
breast, make a faint flush glow in her cheeks, while Monohan could do
that. He did not need to be actively attentive. It was only necessary
for him to be near.

It dawned upon Stella Fyfe in the fullness of the season, when the first
cool October days were upon them, and the lake shores flamed again with
the red and yellow and umber of autumn, that she had been playing with
fire--and that fire burns.

This did not filter into her consciousness by degrees. She had steeled
herself to seeing him pass away with the rest of the summer folk, to
take himself out of her life. She admitted that there would be a gap.
But that had to be. No word other than friendly ones would ever pass
between them. He would go