we must have the
money. He says the times have forced us to do certain things that were
technically wrong--though I guess they were criminally wrong from
what he says, and we must have this money to make things good. So I am
compelled to stay here and work. Father commands me to stay in a way
that makes me fear that my coming home now would mean our ruin. What a
brick John is to stay there and shoulder it all. But, oh, darling,
darling, darling, I love you."

There was more, of course, and it was from a man's heart, and the
strange and sad part of this story is that when Molly Culpepper read
the rest of the letter, her heart burned in shame, and her shame was
keener than her sorrow that her lover was not coming home.

So it happened naturally that Molly Culpepper went to the Christmas
dance with Adrian Brownwell, and when Jane Barclay, seeing the
proprietary way the Alabaman hovered over Molly, and his obvious
jealousy of all the other men who were civil to her, asked John why he
did not let Bob come home for the holidays, as he had promised, for
the Larger Good John told her the facts--that there were some
mortgages that had just come in, and they must be sold, so that the
company could reduce its indebtedness to the bank. But the facts are
not always the truth, and in her heart, which did not reason but only
felt, Molly Culpepper, knowing that Brownwell and John Barclay were in
some kind of an affair together, feared the truth. And from her heart
she wrote to her lover questioning John's motives and pleading with
him to return, and he, having merely the facts, did not see the truth,
and replied impatiently--so impatiently that it hurt, and there was
temper in her answer, and then for over a week no letter came, and for
over a week no reply went back to that. And so the Larger Good was
doing its fine work in a wicked world.

CHAPTER XIII

The spring sun of 1875 that tanned John Barclay's face gave it a
leathery masklike appearance that the succeeding years never entirely
wore off. For he lived in the open by day, riding among his fields in
three townships, watching the green carpet of March rise and begin to
dimple in April, and billow in May. And at night he worked in his
office until the midnight cockcrow. His back was bowed under a score
of burdens. But his greatest burden was the bank; for it gave him
worry; and worry weighed upon him more than work. It was in
April--early April when the days were raw