Wood laid the letter down with a feeling of the most intense surprise. Allen Williams--a young man unfavorably known to him as an admirer of the most conspicuous of the year's Broadway beauties--that man spontaneously interested in a girl like Miss Exeter--a ruthless, stupid young animal like Williams attracted by that pale, honest, intellectual, badly dressed girl--without an effort on her part. No, that was too much to ask him to believe. He opened Cora's letter. Cora wrote a large, sprawling hand, and her only rule was never to write upon the next consecutive page, so that her correspondent went hopelessly turning her letters round and about to find the end of a sentence. Wood caught "----getting herself kissed in poor Edna's blameless sitting room in broad daylight, and thus getting rid of her and an undesirable suitor of Dolly's at one fell----" He twisted the letter about, trying to find the end of this, but coming only upon a description of moonlight on the ocean, he tossed it aside and opened that of the culprit herself. I regret to say, [it began in vein that struck Wood as none too serious] that I have caused a scandal. A young man called Williams tried to kiss me--in fact he did--when I was reading the paper and didn't even know he was in the house. I should have dealt with him; but Durland, who saw it all, was so cunning and manly, and ordered him out of the house. Your sister is naturally annoyed with both of us and won't believe I was not to blame. She keeps quoting something you once said to Dolly under circumstances described as similar--that no man kisses a girl if he knows it's really against her will. If you did say that, Mr. Wood, you're wrong. If a man wants to kiss a girl something in his psychology makes him feel sure she wants him to. But the loathsome creepiness a girl feels at having a man whom she doesn't like touching her is something no man can possibly understand. Williams has behaved technically correctly and actually horridly--saying sourly enough that it was entirely his fault, that he alone was to blame, but letting everyone see that he feels I led him on--only that, of course, a gentleman's lips are sealed. However, he was instantly shipped back to New York on a slow train that stops at every station. As soon as he was gone Mrs. Conway and I had rather a scene. She wanted me to go at once. I said I could not go without your permission. She finally agreed to let me wait until you had been heard from. I need not say I shall do exactly as you wish. It will not be particularly easy to stay after this, but I will do it if you wish--or go--just as you telegraph.