I had to squelch
him, and Linda abetted me successfully. However, that's beside the
point. I hope I haven't irritated you. I'm such a dumb sort of brute
generally. I don't know what imp of prolixity got into my pen. I've
got it all off my chest now, or pretty near.
"J.H.F."
Stella sat thoughtfully gazing at the letter for a long time.
"I wonder?" she said aloud, and the sound of her own voice galvanized
her into action. She put on a coat and went out into the mellow spring
sunshine, and walked till the aimless straying of her feet carried her
to a little park that overlooked the far reach of the Sound and gave
westward on the snowy Olympics, thrusting hoary and aloof to a perfect
sky, like their brother peaks that ringed Roaring Lake. And all the time
her mind kept turning on a question whose asking was rooted neither in
fact nor necessity, an inquiry born of a sentiment she had never
expected to feel.
Should she go back to Jack Fyfe?
She shook her head impatiently when she faced that squarely. Why tread
the same bitter road again? But she put that self-interested phase of it
aside and asked herself candidly if she _could_ go back and take up the
old threads where they had been broken off and make life run smoothly
along the old, quiet channels? She was as sure as she was sure of the
breath she drew that Fyfe wanted her, that he longed for and would
welcome her. But she was equally sure that the old illusions would never
serve.
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