"Wait, Mildred. There is something I have not told you even yet."
"What is it?" she asked, but already I could see that she knew what I was going to say.
"Mildred," I said, "if I ran away from my husband it was not merely because I loved somebody else, but because. . . ."
I could not say it. Do what I would I could not. But holy women like Mildred, who spend their lives among the lost ones, have a way of reading a woman's heart when it is in trouble, and Mildred read mine.
"Do you mean that . . . that there are consequences . . . going to be?" she whispered.
"Yes."
"Does your husband know?"
"Yes."
"And your father?"
"No."