The Mena weekly star., 1918-01-10
ZRAND ".

duced results. She could see and feel that herself.
 So she gained in those weeks some thing of her old boise. Inevitably she was very lonely at times, but she fought against that with the most ef- fective weapon she knew-incessan activity. She was always busy. There was rented piano now sitting in the opposite corner from the gas stove on which she cooked her meals. Howard kept his word. She pulled business" and he raised her to forty a week and offered her contract, which she re- fused. because other avenues, bigger and better than singing in c motion picture house. were tentatively open ing.
 December was waning when she came to Seattle. In the following weeks her only contact with the past. beyond the mill of her own thot ghts, was an item in the Seattle Times touching upon certain litigation in which Fyfe was involved. Briefly. Monohan, under the firm name of the Abbey -Monohan Timber company, was suing Fyfe for heavy damages for the loss of certain booms of logs blown up and set adrift at the mouth of the Tyee river. There was appended an account of the clash over the closed channel and The killing Of Billy Dale No one had been brought to book for that yet Any one of sixty men might have fired the shot
 It made Stella vince. for it took her back to that dreadful day. She could not bear to think that Billy Dale's blood lay on her and Monohan, neither could she stiiie an uneasy apprehen- sion that something more grievous yet might happen on Roaring lake But at least she had done what she could If she were the flame, she had removed herself from the. powder magazine Fyfe had pulled his cedar crew off the Tyee before she left. If aggression came it must come from one direction legal tie between herself and Jack Fyfe would cease to exist. If Monohan cared for her as she thought he cared. a year or two more or less mattered little They had all their lives before them In the long run the errors and mistakes of that upheayal would grow Iim, be as nothing Jack Fyfe would shrug his shoulders and forget, and in due time he would find filter mate, one hs loyal as he deserved. And why might not she, who had never loved him, whose marriage to him had been only a climbing out of the fire into the frying panl
 So that with all her determination to make the most of her gift of song, SC that she would never again be butfeted by material urgencies ill a material world. Stella had nevertheless been listening with the ear of her mind, so to speak, for word from Monohan to say that he understood and that all was well.
 Paradoxieally, she had not expected to hear that word. Once iii Seattle, away from it all there slowly grew upon her the conviction that in Mono hans fine avowal and remuneration he had only followed the cue she had given. In all else he had played his own hand. She couldn't forget Billy Dale. If the motive behind that bloody continuation were thwarted love 1t was thing to shrink from. It seemed to her now, forcing herself to reason with cold blooded logic, that Monohan de- sired her less than he hated Fyfe's pos session of her. that she was merely an added factor in the breaking out of a struggle for mastery between two di- verse and dominant men. Every sign and token went to show that the pot of hate had long been simmering. She had only contributed to it's boiling over
 "Oh, we'll she sighed, fits out of my hands altogether now. I'm sorry, but being sorry doesn't make any diff ference. I'm the least factor. 1t seems, in the whole muddle. A woman isn't much more than an incident in mans life, after all"
 She dressed to go to the Charteris. for her days work was about to begin. As so often happens in life's uneasy HOWs RGilOuo OI tdiinS 0AO EuttttutQ by events in close sequence. Howard and his wife insisted that Stella join them at supper after the show. They were decent folk who accorded frank admiration to her voice and her per sonality They had been kind to her in many little ways. and she was glad to accept.
 At II taxi deposited them at the door of Wains. The Seattle of yester- day needs no introduction to Wain's, and its counterpart can be found in any cosmopolitan seaport city. It is a place of subtle distinction, tucked away on one of the lower hill streets, where after theater parties and night hawks with m eye for pretty women. an ear for sensuous music and a taste for good food go when they have mon ey to spend.
 Ensconced behind a potted palm, with q waiter taking Towards order, Stella let her gaze travel over the din- CTS. She brought up with repressed start at table but four removes from her own, her eyes resting upon the un- mistakable profile of Walter Monohan He was dining vis-a-vis with a young woman chiefly remarkable for pro- fusion of yellow hair and blazing diamond in the lobe of each cara plump, blond, vivacious person of type that Stella, even with her limited experience. found herself instantly classifying.