Jack Fyfe would
shrug his shoulders and forget, and in due time he would find a fitter
mate, one as loyal as he deserved. And why might not she, who had never
loved him, whose marriage to him had been only a climbing out of the
fire into the frying-pan?
So that with all her determination to make the most of her gift of song,
so that she would never again be buffeted by material urgencies in a
material world, Stella had nevertheless been listening with the ear of
her mind, so to speak, for a word from Monohan to say that he
understood, and that all was well.
Paradoxically, she had not expected to hear that word. Once in Seattle,
away from it all, there slowly grew upon her the conviction that in
Monohan's fine avowal and renunciation he had only followed the cue she
had given. In all else he had played his own hand. She couldn't forget
Billy Dale. If the motive behind that bloody culmination were thwarted
love, it was a thing to shrink from. It seemed to her now, forcing
herself to reason with cold-blooded logic, that Monohan desired her less
than he hated Fyfe's possession of her; that she was merely an added
factor in the breaking out of a struggle for mastery between two
diverse and dominant men. Every sign and token went to show that the pot
of hate had long been simmering. She had only contributed to its boiling
over.
"Oh, well," she sighed, "it's out of my hands altogether now. I'm sorry,
but being sorry doesn't make any difference. I'm the least factor, it
seems, in the whole muddle.
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