Stella sat watching the gray lines of rain beat down on the asphalt, the muddy rivulets that streamed along the gutter. A forlorn sighing of wind in the bare boughs of a gaunt elm that stood before her window reminded her achingly of the wind drone among the tall firs. A ghastly two weeks had intervened since Jack Junior's little life blinked out. There had been wild moments when she wished she could keep him company on that journey into the unknown. But grief seldom kills. Sometimes it hardens. Always it works a change, a greater or less revamping of the spirit. It was so with Stella Fyfe, although she was not keenly aware of any forthright metamorphosis. She was, for the present, too actively involved in material changes. The storm and stress of that period between her yielding to the lure of Monohan's personality and the burial of her boy had sapped her of all emotional reaction. When they had performed the last melancholy service for him and went back to the bungalow at Cougar Point, she was as physically exhausted, as near the limit of numbed endurance in mind and body as it is possible for a young and healthy woman to become. And when a measure of her natural vitality re-asserted itself, she laid her course. She could no more abide the place where she was than a pardoned convict can abide the prison that has restrained him. It was empty now of everything that made life tolerable, the hushed rooms a constant reminder of her loss. She would catch herself listening for that baby voice, for those pattering footsteps, and realize with a sickening pang that she would never hear them again. The snapping of that last link served to deepen and widen the gulf between her and Fyfe. He went about his business grave and preoccupied. They seldom talked together. She knew that his boy had meant a lot to him; but he had his work. He did not have to sit with folded hands and think until thought drove him into the bogs of melancholy. And so the break came. With desperate abruptness Stella told him that she could not stay, that feeling as she did, she despised herself for unwilling acceptance of everything where she could give nothing in return, that the original mistake of their marriage would never be rectified by a perpetuation of that mistake. "What's the use, Jack?" she finished. "You and I are so made that we can't be neutral. We've got to be thoroughly in accord, or we have to part. There's no chance for us to get back to the old way of living. I don't want to; I can't. I could never be complaisant and agreeable again. We might as well come to a full stop, and each go his own way." She had braced herself for a clash of wills. There was none. Fyfe listened to her, looked at her long and earnestly, and in the end made a quick, impatient gesture with his hands. "Your life's your own to make what you please of, now that the kid's no longer a factor," he said quietly. "What do you want to do? Have you made any plans?"