"Are you completely ruined, Jack?" she asked after an interval. "Charlie said you were." "Well," he answered reflectively, "I haven't had time to balance accounts, but I guess I will be. The timber's gone. I've saved most of the logging gear. But if I realized on everything that's left, and squared up everything, I guess I'd be pretty near strapped." "Will you take me in as a business partner, Jack?" she asked eagerly. "That's what I had in mind when I came up here. I made up my mind to propose that, after I'd heard you were ruined. Oh, it seems silly now, but I wanted to make amends that way; at least, I tried to tell myself that. Listen. When my father died, he left some supposedly worthless oil stock. But it proved to have a market value. I got my share of it the other day. It'll help us to make a fresh start--together." She had the envelope and the check tucked inside her waist. She took it out now and pressed the green slip into his hand. Fyfe looked at it and at her, a little chuckle deep in his throat. "Nineteen thousand, five hundred," he laughed. "Well, that's quite a stake for you. But if you go partners with me, what about your singing?" "I don't see how I can have my cake and eat it, too," she said lightly. "I don't feel quite so eager for a career as I did." "Well, we'll see," he said. "That light of yours shouldn't be hidden under a bushel. And still, I don't like the idea of you being away from me, which a career implies." He put the check back in the envelope, smiling oddly to himself, and tucked it back in her bosom. She caught and pressed his hand there, against the soft flesh. "Won't you use it, Jack?" she pleaded. "Won't it help? Don't let any silly pride influence you. There mustn't ever be anything like that between us again." "There won't be," he smiled. "Frankly, if I need it, I'll use it. But that's a matter there's plenty of time to decide. You see, although technically I may be broke, I'm a long way from the end of my tether. I think I'll have my working outfit clear, and the country's full of timber. I've got a standing in the business that neither fire nor anything else can destroy. No, I haven't any false pride about the money, dear. But the money part of our future is a detail. With the incentive I've got now to work and plan, it won't take me five years to be a bigger toad in the timber puddle than I ever was. You don't know what a dynamo I am when I get going." "I don't doubt that," she said proudly. "But the money's yours, if you need it." "I need something else a good deal more right now," he laughed. "That's something to eat. Aren't you hungry, Stella? Wouldn't you like a cup of coffee?" "I'm famished," she admitted--the literal truth. The vaulting uplift of spirit, that glad little song that kept lilting in her heart, filled her with peace and contentment, but physically she was beginning to experience acute hunger. She recalled that she had eaten scarcely anything that day.