It was a week since she had seen the prodigal. They had quarreled some days ago, for Mr. Pennington's lazy humor had turned to a reckless unconvention which had somewhat startled her. Her secret declaration of independence had led her a little out of her depth, and she began to feel more and more like the child with the jam-pot--only the jam-pot was out of all proportion to real jam-pots and the smears seemed to defy the most generous use of soap and water. This horrible Doe was the neighbor's boy who told, and Mortimer Crabb was suddenly invested with a newly-born parental dignity and wisdom. Mort! It made her shudder to think of her husband receiving those letters. She knew him so well and yet she knew him so little. She felt tempted to throw all else to the winds and make a full confession--of what? of a childish ingenuousness--which confession would magnify a hundred-fold. What had she to confess? Meetings in the Park? Her face burned with shame. It would have seemed less childish if her face had burned with shame at things a little more tangible. Lunches in out-of-the-way restaurants, innocent enough in themselves, whose only pleasure was the knowledge that she took them unpermitted. She knew that she deserved to be stood in the corner or be sent to bed without her supper, but she quailed at the thought of meeting her husband's eye. She knew that he could make it singularly cold and uncompromising. And the letters. Why hadn't Heywood burned them? And yet why should he have? Pennington's ideas of a compromising position she realized, with some bitterness, differed somewhat from hers. And she knew she _couldn't_ have written anything to regret. She tried to think, and a phrase here and there recurred to her. Perhaps Mort might know her well enough to guess how little they meant--but perhaps he didn't. Words written to another were so desperately easy to misunderstand.