ays the wrong man.

Anyway, Gordon and I have quarreled definitely and finally. I
should rather have ended without a quarrel, but considering his
temperament,--and mine, too, I must confess,--we had to go off in a big
smoky explosion. He came yesterday afternoon, after I'd written him not
to come, and we went walking over Knowltop. For three and a half hours
we paced back and forth over that windy moor and discussed ourselves
to the bottommost recesses of our beings. No one can ever say the break
came through misunderstanding each other!

It ended by Gordon's going, never to return. As I stood there at the
end and watched him drop out of sight over the brow of the hill, and
realized that I was free and alone and my own master well, Judy, such a
sense of joyous relief, of freedom, swept over me! I can't tell you;
I don't believe any happily married person could ever realize how
wonderfully, beautifully ALONE I felt. I wanted to throw my arms out and
embrace the whole waiting world that belonged suddenly to me. Oh, it
is such a relief to have it settled! I faced the truth the night of
the fire when I saw the old John Grier go, and realized that a new John
Grier would be built in its place and that I wouldn't be here to do it.
A horrible jealousy clutched at my heart. I couldn't give it up, and
during those agonizing moments while I thought we had lost our doctor,
I realized what his life meant, and how much more significant than
Gordon's. And I knew then that I couldn't desert him. I had to go on and
carry out all of the plans we made together.

I don't seem to be telling you anything but a mess of words, I am so
full of such a mess of crowding emotions. I want to talk and talk and
talk myself into coherence. But, anyway, I stood alone in the winter
twilight, and I took a deep breath of clear cold air, and I felt
beautifully, wonderfully, electrically free.

And then I ran and leaped and skipped down the hill and across the
pastures toward our iron confines, and I sang to myself. Oh, it was a
scandalous proceeding, when, according to all precedent, I should have
gone trailing home with a broken wing. I never gave one thought to
poor Gordon, who was carrying a broken, bruised, betrayed heart to the
railroad station.

As I entered the house I was greeted by the joyous clatter of the
children trooping to their supper. They were suddenly MINE, and lately,
as my doom became more and more imminent, they had seemed fading a