she assumed.  And she could not define love, except as some incomprehensible transport of emotion which irresistibly drew a man and a woman together, a divine fire kindled in two hearts.  It was not a thing she could vouch for by personal experience.  It might never touch and warm her, that divine fire.  Instinct did now and then warn her that some time it would wrap her like a flame.  But in the meantime—­Life had her in midstream of its remorseless, drab current, sweeping her along.  A foothold offered.  Half a loaf, a single slice of bread even, is better than none.

Jack Fyfe did not happen in again for nearly two weeks and then only to pay a brief call, but he stole an opportunity, when Katy John was not looking, to whisper in Stella’s ear: 

“Have you been thinking about that bungalow of ours?”

She shook her head, and he went out quietly, without another word.  He neither pleaded nor urged, and perhaps that was wisest, for in spite of herself Stella thought of him continually.  He loomed always before her, a persistent, compelling factor.

She knew at last, beyond any gainsaying, that the venture tempted, largely perhaps because it contained so great an element of the unknown.  To get away from this soul-dwarfing round meant much.  She felt herself reasoning desperately that the frying pan could not be worse than the fire, and held at least the merit of greater dignity and freedom from the twin evils of poverty and thankless domestic slavery.

While she considered this, pro and con, shrinking from such a step one hour, considering it soberly the next, the days dragged past in wearisome sequence.  The great depth of snow endured, was added to by spasmodic flurries.  The frosts held.  The camp seethed with the restlessness of the men.  In default of the daily work that consumed their superfluous energy, the loggers argued and fought, drank and gambled, made “rough house” in their sleeping quarters till sometimes Stella’s cheeks blanched and she expected murder to be done.  Twice the Chickamin came back from Roaring Springs with whisky aboard, and a protracted debauch ensued.  Once a drunken logger shouldered his way into the kitchen to leer unpleasantly at Stella, and, himself inflamed by liquor and the affront, Charlie Benton beat the man until his face was a mass of bloody bruises.  That was only one of a dozen brutal incidents.  All the routine discipline of the woods seemed to have slipped out of Benton’s hands.  When the second whisky consignment struck the camp, Stella stayed in her room, refusing to cook until order reigned again.  Benton grumblingly took up the burden himself.  With Katy’s help and that of sundry loggers, he fed the roistering crew, but for his sister it was a two-day period of protesting disgust.

That mood, like so many of her moods, relapsed into dogged endurance.  She took up the work again when Charlie promised that no more whisky should be allowed in the camp.