There was the stubborn fact that she had
openly declared her love for another man, that by her act she had
plunged her husband into far-reaching conflict. Such a conflict existed.
She could put her finger on no concrete facts, but it was in the air.
She heard whispers of a battle between giants--a financial duel to the
death--with all the odds against Jack Fyfe.
Win or lose, there would be scars. And the struggle, if not of and by
her deed, had at least sprung into malevolent activity through her. Men,
she told herself, do not forget these things; they rankle. Jack Fyfe was
only human. No, Stella felt that they could only come safe to the old
port by virtue of a passion that could match Fyfe's own. And she put
that rather sadly beyond her, beyond the possibilities. She had felt
stirrings of it, but not to endure. She was proud and sensitive and
growing wise with bitterly accumulated experience. It had to be all or
nothing with them, a cleaving together complete enough to erase and
forever obliterate all that had gone before. And since she could not see
that as a possibility, there was nothing to do but play the game
according to the cards she held. Of these the trump was work, the inner
glow that comes of something worth while done toward a definite,
purposeful end. She took up her singing again with a distinct relief.
Time passed quickly and uneventfully enough between the wedding day and
the date of her Granada engagement. It seemed a mere breathing space
before the middle of July rolled around, and she was once more aboard a
Vancouver boat.
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