Kitty almost sniffed, but she was too agitated to be scornful. "Just
leave that to me, please. It won't make me a bit more dishonourable to
open the letter again--I've opened it once, and I don't feel any the
worse for it. I have no conscience, and things don't weigh on my mind at
all. I'm a light-minded person."

Looking closely at her, the Young Doctor got a still further insight
into the mind and soul of this prairie girl, who used a lid of irony to
cover a well of deep feeling. Things did not weigh on her mind! He was
sure that pain to the wife of Shiel Crozier would be mortal torture to
Kitty Tynan.

"But I felt exactly what I wrote that Derby Day when he broke his
pledge, and he ought to know me exactly as I was," urged Mona. "I don't
want to deceive him, to appear a bit better than I am."

"Oh, you'd rather lose him!" said Kitty almost savagely. "Knowing how
hard it is to keep a man under the best circumstances, you'd willingly
make the circumstances as bad as they can be--is that it? Besides,
weren't you sorry afterwards that you wrote that letter?"

"Yes, yes, desperately sorry."

"And you wished often that your real self had written on Derby Day and
not the scratch-cat you were then?"

Mona flushed, but answered bravely, "Yes, a thousand times."

"What business had you to show him your cat-self, your unreal, not your
real self on Derby Day five years ago? Wasn't it your duty to show him
your real self?"

Mona nodded helplessly. "Yes, I know it was."

"Then isn't it your duty to see that your real self speaks in that
letter now?"

"I want him to know me exactly as I am, and then--"

Kitty made a passionate gesture. Was ever such an uncomprehending woman
as this diamond-button of a wife?

"And then you would be unhappy ever after instead of being happy ever
after. What is the good of prejudicing your husband against you by
telling the unnecessary truth. He is desperate, and besides, he has been
away from you for five years, and we all change somehow--particularly
men, when there are so many women in the world, and very pretty women
of all ages and kinds and colours and tastes, and dazzling, deceitful
hussies too. It isn't wise for any woman to let her husband or any one
at all see her exactly as she is; and only the silly ones do it. They
tell what they think is the truth about their own wickedness, and it
isn't the truth at all, because I suppose women don't know how to tell
the exact truth; and