But--she had had a long time to think, to compare, to digest all that
she knew of him, much that was subconscious impression rising late to
the surface, a little that she heard from various sources. The sum total
gave her a man of rank passions, of rare and merciless finesse where his
desires figured, a man who got what he wanted by whatever means most
fitly served his need. Greater than any craving to possess a woman would
be the measure of his rancor against a man who humiliated him, thwarted
him. She could understand how a man like Monohan would hate a man like
Jack Fyfe, would nurse and feed on the venom of his hate until setting a
torch to Fyfe's timber would be a likely enough counterstroke.
She shrank from the thought. Yet it lingered until she felt guilty.
Though it made no material difference to her that Fyfe might or might
not face ruin, she could not, before her own conscience, evade
responsibility. The powder might have been laid, but her folly had
touched spark to the fuse, as she saw it. That seared her like a pain
far into the night. For every crime a punishment; for every sin a
penance. Her world had taught her that. She had never danced; she had
only listened to the piper and longed to dance, as nature had fashioned
her to do. But the piper was sending his bill. She surveyed it wearily,
emotionally bankrupt, wondering in what coin of the soul she would have
to pay.
CHAPTER XXIII
A RIDE BY NIGHT
Stella sang in the gilt ballroom of the Granada next afternoon, behind
the footlights of a miniature stage, with the blinds drawn and a few
hundred of Vancouver's social elect critically, expectantly listening.
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