ce of expression.

"No," he said quietly, "it would only be the beginning. Lord God, but
this has been a day."

He whirled about with a quick gesture of his hands, a harsh, raspy laugh
that was very near a sob, and left her. Twenty minutes later, when
Stella was irresistibly drawn back to the bedroom, she found him sitting
sober and silent, looking at his son.

A little past midnight Jack Junior died.

CHAPTER XIX

FREE AS THE WIND

Stella sat watching the gray lines of rain beat down on the asphalt, the
muddy rivulets that streamed along the gutter. A forlorn sighing of wind
in the bare boughs of a gaunt elm that stood before her window reminded
her achingly of the wind drone among the tall firs.

A ghastly two weeks had intervened since Jack Junior's little life
blinked out. There had been wild moments when she wished she could keep
him company on that journey into the unknown. But grief seldom kills.
Sometimes it hardens. Always it works a change, a greater or less
revamping of the spirit. It was so with Stella Fyfe, although she was
not keenly aware of any forthright metamorphosis. She was, for the
present, too actively involved in material changes.

The storm and stress of that period between her yielding to the lure of
Monohan's personality and the burial of her boy had sapped her of all
emotional reaction. When they had performed the last melancholy service
for him and went back to the bungalow at Cougar Point, she was as
physically exhausted, as near the limit of numbed endurance in mind and
body as it is possible for a young and healthy woman to become. And
when a measure of her natural vitality re-asserted itself, she laid her
course. She could no more abide the place where she was than a pardoned
convict can abide the prison that has restrained him. It was empty now
of everything that made life tolerable, the hushed rooms a constant
reminder of her loss. She would catch herself listening for that baby
voice, for those pattering footsteps, and realize with a sickening pang
that she would never hear them again.

The snapping of that last link served to deepen and widen the gulf
between her and Fyfe. He went about his business grave and preoccupied.
They seldom talked together. She knew that his boy had meant a lot to
him; but he had his work. He did not have to sit with folded hands and
think until thought drove him into the bogs of melancholy.

And so the break came. With desperate abruptne