"I don't quite know what quixotic means," rejoined Kitty dryly. "If it
wasn't understood while you lived together that what was one's was the
other's, that it was all in one purse, and that you shut your eyes to
the name on the purse and took as you wanted, I don't see how you could
expect him, after your five years' desertion, to take money from you
now."

"My five years' desertion!" exclaimed Mona. Surely this girl was more
than reckless in her talk. Kitty was not to be put down. "If you don't
mind plain speaking, he was always with you, but you weren't always with
him in those days. This letter showed that." She tapped it on her
thumb-nail. "It was only when he had gone and you saw what you had lost,
that you came back to him--in heart, I mean. Well, if you didn't go away
with him when he went, and you wouldn't have gone unless he had ordered
you to go--and he wouldn't do that--it's clear you deserted him, since
you did that which drove him from home, and you stayed there instead of
going with him. I've worked it out, and it is certain you deserted him
five years ago. Desertion does't mean a sea of water between, it means
an ocean of self-will and love-me-first between. If you hadn't deserted
him, as this letter shows, he wouldn't have been here. I expect he told
you so; and if he did, what did you say to him?"

The Young Doctor's eyes were full of decorous mirth and apprehension, for
such logic and such impudence as Kitty's was like none he had ever heard.
Yet it was commanding too.

Kitty caught the look in his eyes and blazed up. "Isn't what I said
correct? Isn't it all true and logical? And if it is, why do you sit
there looking so superior?"