in Kansas. I would be glad to come back and live among them. Will you
let me? A telegram will bring me to you on the next train.

With love to both you and Jack, who will be seven years old this
week,

Affectionately,
John.

The tension was broken. Elizabeth laid the letter back with a smile. How
like John to suggest a telegram! John never could wait. How well she knew
his little weaknesses; the written characters of the missive had the
flowing curves of haste in their running letters. He had written on the
impulse of the moment, no matter how long the desire had been in his
heart. The very spontaneity of the confession was unpremeditated and
worked in John Hunter's favour. He had remembered Jack's birthday too!
That day seven years ago rose up in Elizabeth's memory to plead for Jack's
father. She earnestly desired John's presence, and yet--could it be done?

Far into the night Elizabeth Hunter sat with the letter before her,
reading and rereading it, pondering upon the possibilities of the future,
seeing them in the light of the past she had spent with him, wondering
what sort of man her husband had become in the five years since she had
seen him. The letter sounded as if those years might have been profitable
ones. There was both the openness of real honesty and the reserve of real
strength in the confession about his financial affairs. The most hopeful
thing she found in the letter was the sentence about Hugh's estimate of
the neighbours among whom they had lived and the implied comparison
regarding the city in which he now did business. Dear old John! Had
Chicago business men tried the methods on him that he had thought it fair
to apply to his dealings with her? In the midst of that question rose the
one--would John Hunter feel the same toward Hugh Noland's estimates when
he was told the truth about his wife's affection for Hugh, and of the
weakness of both in the demonstrations of that affection? Well, it had to
be told. Scandal would be hard to face with no denial possible. Doctor
Morgan had known it all and still trusted her; likewise Luther; but
Hepsie, and Jake, and Sadie? Besides, Jack would have to know, and would
suffer for things of which he was innocent! The girl wrestled with the
subject till midnight, and long after. At last, to put it where she could
not deceive herself, she wrote a