Billy was almost terrified by the discovery. There it was, in irrefutable black and white. She stuffed it back into the basket, and left the house like a thief, panting for the open air. A suspicion only ten minutes before, now she felt as if no other fact on earth had ever so fully possessed her. For an hour she drove about in a daze. Then she went home, and sat down at her desk, and wrote the following letter: "Mv DEAR RACHAEL: The letter with the darling little 'B' came yesterday. I think he is cute to learn to write his own letter so quickly. Tell him that mother is proud of him for picking so many blackberries, and will love the jam. It is as hot as fire here, and the park has that steamy smell that a hothouse has. I have been driving about in Joe Butler's car all afternoon. We are going to Long Beach to-night. "Rachael--Magsie Clay and a man named Richard Gardiner were married this afternoon. He is an invalid or something; he is at St. Luke's Hospital, and she and his mother are going to take him to California at once. What do you know about that? Of course this is a secret, and for Heaven's sake, if you tell anybody this, don't say I gave it away. "If Magsie Clay should send you a bunch of letters, she will just do it to be a devil, and I want to ask you to burn them up before you read them. You know how you talked to me about divorce, Rachael! What you don't know can't hurt you. Don't please Magsie Clay to the extent of doing exactly what she wants you to do. If anyone you love has been a fool, why, it is certainly hard to understand how they could, but you stand by what you said to me the other day, and forget it. "I feel as if I was breaking into your own affairs. I hope you won't care, and that I'm not all in the dark about this--" "Affectionately, BILLY." CHAPTER VI This letter, creased from constant reading, Rachael showed to George Valentine a week later. The doctor, who had spent the week-end with his family at Clark's Hills, was in his car and running past the gate of Home Dunes on his way back to town when Rachael stopped him. She looked her composed and dignified self in her striped blue linen and deep-brimmed hat, but the man's trained look found the circles about her wonderful eyes, and he detected signs of utter weariness in her voice. "Read this, George," said she, resting against the door of his car, and opening the letter before him. "This came from Billy--Mrs. Pickering, you know--several days ago." George read the document through twice, then raised questioning eyes to hers, and made the mouth of a whistler. "What do you think?" Rachael questioned in her turn. "Lord! I don't know what to think," said George. "Do you suppose this can be true?" Rachael sighed wearily, staring down the road under the warming leaves of the maples into a far vista of bare dunes in thinning September sunshine. "It might be, I suppose. You can see that Billy believes it," she said.