"I’m leaving for California to-morrow!" Katherine spoke huskily, she no longer cried. "Everything ready, only good-bye, eh? Well, Kit, you’ve worked efficiently once you began." They looked at each other like strangers. "I shall not follow you. When you want me, come to me. My soul has not been awakened as yours has, I’ll keep on right here and fly the flag over the ruins. My God! This _is_ a shot out of a clear sky." "Jim, I’ve seen the clouds gathering ever since——" "When, Kit?" "That first picture that Andy said meant genius, not plain talent, and since the baby went." "Poor girl." "But not so poor as I might have been," Katherine again clutched her book proudly. "It’s the heat, Kit. By autumn we’ll be rational. A vacation apart will fill up the cracks." "Until then, Jim, we’ll be friends?" "Friends, Kit, friends!" Norval clutched the straw. On this basis a sense of relief came. And so Katherine went to California—and Jim Norval? *CHAPTER XIII* *THE INEVITABLE* Jim Norval took to the Canadian north-west. He had meant to be quite tragic and virtuous. He had meant to stay in the studio and fight out the biggest problem of his life, but he did not. Undoubtedly the shock Katherine had given him stunned him at first. But, as he revived, he was the victim of all sorts of devils which, during his life, had been suppressed by what he believed was character. Perhaps if the season had been less humid and Anderson Law had been near with his plain ideals and picturesque language, things might have been different. But the humidity was infernal and Law obliterated. The man is the true conservative. Realizing how cramping this is, he has verbally relegated the emotion to woman; but he has not escaped actuality. No matter how widely a man’s fancy may wander, his convictions must be planted on something. Norval, having married, believing himself in love, took root. Now that he was confronted by the possibility of either shrivelling or clutching to something else, he found he could make no decision in the old environment. For a week he contemplated following Katherine, it would be easier than floundering around without her. The next week he decided to telegraph. He grew calm as he wondered whether it would be wiser to capitulate; take the position of an outraged but masterful husband, or to say he was on the verge of death? Then something over which Norval had no control calmed and held him. "A summer apart will hurt neither of us," he concluded, and took the train for Banff. Mentally and physically, he let go. He kept to the silent places, the deep woods and big rivers. He took no note of time. Once a letter was forwarded from Anderson Law. Law wrote: