While she sat there, drawn-faced with the cold, thinking rather amazedly
these things which she told herself she had no right to think, the
launch slipped into the quiet nook of Cougar Bay and slowed down to the
float.
Monohan helped her out, threw off the canoe's painter, and climbed back
into the launch.
"You're as wet as I am," Stella said. "Won't you come up to the house
and get a change of clothes? I haven't even thanked you."
"Nothing to be thanked for," he smiled up at her. "Only please remember
not to get offshore in a canoe again. I mightn't be handy the next
time--and Roaring Lake's as fickle as your charming sex. All smiles one
minute, storming the next. No, I won't stay this time, thanks. A little
wet won't hurt me. I wasn't in the water long enough to get chilled, you
know. I'll be home in half an hour. Run along and get dressed, Mrs.
Fyfe, and drink something hot to drive that chill away. Good-by."
Stella went up to the house, her hand tingling with his parting grip.
Over and above the peril she had escaped rose an uneasy vision of a
greater peril to her peace of mind. The platitudes of soul-affinity, of
irresistible magnetic attraction, of love that leaped full-blown into
reality at the touch of a hand or the glance of an eye, she had always
viewed with distrust, holding them the weaknesses of weak, volatile
natures. But there was something about this man which had stirred her,
nothing that he said or did, merely some elusive, personal attribute.
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