"Nothing to be thanked for," he smiled up at her. "Only please remember not to get offshore in a canoe again. I mightn't be handy the next time--and Roaring Lake's as fickle as your charming sex. All smiles one minute, storming the next. No, I won't stay this time, thanks. A little wet won't hurt me. I wasn't in the water long enough to get chilled, you know. I'll be home in half an hour. Run along and get dressed, Mrs. Fyfe, and drink something hot to drive that chill away. Good-by." Stella went up to the house, her hand tingling with his parting grip. Over and above the peril she had escaped rose an uneasy vision of a greater peril to her peace of mind. The platitudes of soul-affinity, of irresistible magnetic attraction, of love that leaped full-blown into reality at the touch of a hand or the glance of an eye, she had always viewed with distrust, holding them the weaknesses of weak, volatile natures. But there was something about this man which had stirred her, nothing that he said or did, merely some elusive, personal attribute. She had never undergone any such experience, and she puzzled over it now. A chance stranger, and his touch could make her pulse leap. It filled her with astonished dismay. Afterward, dry-clad and warm, sitting in her pet chair, Jack Junior cooing at her from a nest among cushions on the floor, the natural reaction set in, and she laughed at herself. When Fyfe came home, she told him lightly of her rescue. He said nothing at first, only sat drumming on his chair-arm, his eyes steady on her. "That might have cost you your life," he said at last. "Will you remember not to drift offshore again?" "I rather think I shall," she responded. "It wasn't a pleasant experience." "Monohan, eh?" he remarked after another interval. "So he's on Roaring Lake again." "Do you know him?" she asked. "Yes," he replied briefly. For a minute or so longer he sat there, his face wearing its habitual impassiveness. Then he got up, kissed her with a queer sort of intensity, and went put. Stella gazed after him, mildly surprised. It wasn't quite in his usual manner. CHAPTER XV A RESURRECTION It might have been a week or so later that Stella made a discovery which profoundly affected the whole current of her thought. The long twilight was just beginning. She was curled on the living-room floor, playing with the baby. Fyfe and Charlie Benton sat by a window, smoking, conversing, as they frequently did, upon certain phases of the timber industry. A draft from an open window fluttered some sheet music down off the piano rack, and Stella rescued it from Jack Junior's tiny, clawing hands. Some of the Abbeys had been there the evening before. One bit of music was a song Linda had tried to sing and given up because it soared above her vocal range. Stella rose to put up the music. Without any premeditated idea of playing, she sat down at the piano and began to run over the accompaniment. She could play passably.