science-plagued interchanges of affection
have been. I shall permit and assist you
to keep this matter a secret. To let it be
known would instantly wreck your own
career, and would blast at a breath the
fortunes of our church and of every one
of both our kindreds. I will therefore not
at this time require you to resign your
church office or to break off those business
intimacies with me which, though no longer
founded in personal esteem, are vital to
interests that common decency must move
you to shield from new peril.

I ask for no repair of the inextinguish-
able wrong you have done me. I only
ask you not to fancy that I am to be be-
guiled by arguments or denials or moved
by threats, or that one word I here write
is founded on conjecture or inference.
Grovelling at my feet, in sobs of shame
and with prayers for pardon, Isabel has
told me all. Has told me all, Leonard
Byington, my once trusted friend. Now,

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