What a brick John is to stay there and shoulder it all.

But, oh, darling, darling, darling, I love you." There was more, of course, and it was from a man's heart, and the strange and sad part of this story is that when Molly Culpepper read the rest of the letter, her heart burned in shame, and her shame was keener than her sorrow that her lover was not coming home.
So it happened naturally that Molly Culpepper went to the Christmas dance with Adrian Brownwell, and when Jane Barclay, seeing the proprietary way the Alabaman hovered over Molly, and his obvious jealousy of all the other men who were civil to her, asked John why he did not let Bob come home for the holidays, as he had promised, for the Larger Good John told her the facts--that there were some mortgages that had just come in, and they must be sold, so that the company could reduce its indebtedness to the bank.

But the facts are not always the truth, and in her heart, which did not reason but only felt, Molly Culpepper, knowing that Brownwell and John Barclay were in some kind of an affair together, feared the truth.

And from her heart she wrote to her lover questioning John's motives and pleading with him to return, and he, having merely the facts, did not see the truth, and replied impatiently--so impatiently that it hurt, and there was temper in her answer, and then for over a week no letter came, and for over a week no reply went back to that.

And so the Larger Good was doing its fine work in a wicked world..