"Are you sure she understood?" asked Sylvia, stepping nearer and looking fearlessly into his eyes. "There is a shame Marcia never in this world would face for any man; but it is not the shame you have just described.
"It is the shame of wronging another woman; destroying a home. I know that sounds old-fashioned in days like these. Perhaps Marcia is old-fashioned. Perhaps I am. In the villages where we have been brought up, we do not go in for the new standards sponsored by more up-to-date communities. We believe in marriage as a sacred, enduring sacrament—not a bond to be lightly broken. When you offered Marcia less than that—"
"I never offered Marcia any such shameful position, Sylvia," cried Stanley Heath. "I would not so far insult her."
"But you are married."
"That is a lie. Who told you so?"
"The—the wire to Mrs. Stanley Heath—the telephone message. I heard you call her Joan."
"But, Sylvia, Mrs. Stanley Heath is not my wife. She is my young step-mother, my father's widow. I always have called her Joan."
"Oh! I beg your pardon."
"I see it all now," the man exclaimed. "You have entirely misunderstood the situation. I'm a Junior. Since my father's death, however, people have got out of the way of using the term. Sometimes I myself am careless about it. So Marcia thought—"
"Of course she did. We both did. So did Elisha Winslow and Eleazer Crocker. So did lots of other people in Wilton."