"Yes, _widows_!" He could barely hear the sob which she stifled in her throat.

"Well, then," said he, "how about you and me? I don't think it's a fair argument, but I ought to point out to you that perhaps I've got a chance in the world. They wanted me, for instance, to make the run for the senatorship--against Judge Henderson. Today I agreed with him not to accept the candidacy. In return he agreed to drop that case against Don.

Well, you've traded me out of the United States Senate, Aurora. But I made that trade--for you and the boy."

She looked up at him in sudden astonishment. She could not evade the feeling of shelter in his great presence as he stood there, speaking calmly, absolutely in hand, a grotesque and yet a great soul--yes, a great soul as it seemed to her, so used to littler souls. After all, she never really had known this man. Sacrifice? Had he not given freely, as a sacrifice, the greatest gift a man has--his hope for power and preferment? And he spoke of it as though it were a little thing. Aurora Lane was large enough to know a large act, belittled though it were by the doer of the deed.

"You see," he began, "we're old enough perhaps to talk plainly, plainer than young folks can--mostly I presume they don't talk at all--but I may talk plainly?"

"Oh, yes," said she, sighing. "I suppose we've made that certain."

"Now, now, don't say that--nothing of the sort, my dear. Your past is out of this question altogether. You're a _widow_, that's all. Your unknown husband is dead--he is unknown, but he is dead. That's the record, and accepted here. And isn't that our solution--the only one in all the world possible for us?"

She did not answer at all.

"The boy and I--I reckon the two of us could keep most of the people in this town or in this world attending to their own business, and not bothering about ours. Don't you believe that, Aurora? We've made a start--a sort of preliminary demonstration already."

But still she did not answer, and, agonized now, he went on:

"I'm a plain man, Aurora, pretty ignorant, I expect. I didn't come from anywhere--there's no family much back of me--I have had really very little schooling, and I've had to fight my own way. I can't play bridge--I don't know one card from another. I don't dance--there's no human being could ever teach a dance step to me. I've never been in society, because I don't belong there. But, as I said, I've got some standards of a man and some feelings of a man. I love you a lot more than you can tell from what I've said, or what I've done. It'll be a great deal more to you than you can believe now. I'll do a great deal more for you than you can realize. I'll give you at last--later than I ought to have done it--something you've never had--your _life_--your _chance_ in the world--your chance at real love and real affection and real loyalty. You've never had that, Aurora. I couldn't offer it, for I had my own secret to keep, and my own fight to make. But love and loyalty--they'd be sweet, wouldn't they?"

She bent her head down upon her hands, which lay folded at the top of the pickets of the little fence.

"Sweet--sweet--yes, yes!" he heard her murmur.

"Well, then, why not end the argument?" he said. "Why, I've seen you here, all these years. I know every hair of your head. I have come really to love you, all of you, as a man ought to love his wife. I can't resist it--it's an awful thing. I don't think I'll forget--it's too late in life for me to begin over again, it's you or nothing for me. There's never been any other woman for me--and that ought at least to speak for me. There's been no other man for you. So why not end it? The world's been cruel enough for you as it is. I'll not say it hasn't been cruel to me, too. I've sat tight and eaten my heart. I've had to fight, too. But don't I understand you, your fight, what it means to buck a game where all the cards are stacked? Don't I know?"

"It has been cruel, yes," said she at length, finding herself able to speak, "but it seems it has not been quite so cruel as it could be until--until now."

"Why, what do you mean? Am I cruel? Why?"

"You said--you said something about my being a widow."

He nodded. "Yes. I pick you up now--it's as though I find you new--I know you now at a later stage altogether in your life. You've grown. I see you as new and fresh as though you were just risen from the sea....

And all the past is nothing to me."

"You must not talk," said she, "because it only is to make us both the more unhappy. You are quixotic enough, or great enough--I don't know which--I can't tell which it is--to say you'd take the shame on your own shoulders in order to take it off of mine! You can't mean that! No! no!

One life ruined is enough--you've ruined yours enough now, today, by what you've done for Don and me."

He seemed not to hear her.

"I've watched you all these years, and you've lived like a recluse, like a widow. I can't reproach you. G.o.d! Which of us may first cast a stone?"

Aurora Lane turned to him now a brave face, the same brave face she had turned to the world all these years.

"Oh," said she, "if only I had learned to lie! Maybe some women could lie to you. And women get so tired--so awfully tired sometimes--I couldn't blame them. I might marry you, yes--I believe I could. But I would never lie to you--I won't lie to you now."

"What are you going to say to me, Aurie?"

"What I'm going to say to all the world! I've never been married to anyone and can't be now. It would be more horrible to me than--that other. It's too late. It--it means too much to me--marriage--marriage--marriage! Don't--don't--you mustn't say some things to a woman. Oh, if all this had happened twenty years ago, when I was young, I might have been weak enough to listen to what you say. I was weak and frightened then--I didn't know how I'd ever get on--all life was a terror to me. But that was twenty years ago. I've made my fight now, and I've learned that after a fashion at least I could get on--I did--I have. I can go on through alone the rest of the way, and it's right that I should. That's what I'm going to do!"

She saw the great hand clutch the more tightly on two picket tops. They broke under the closing grip of his great hand.

"That's right hard," said he simply. "We can't be married now? But--tell me, can't I help you?"

"Oh, no, no, don't--don't talk of that!" she said. She was weeping now.

"Don't try to help me," she sobbed bitterly. "You can't help me--n.o.body can help me--there's no help in the world--not even G.o.d can help me!

You've been cruel--all the world has been nothing but cruel to me all my life. I've nothing to hope--there's nothing that can help me, nothing.

I'm one of the lost, that's all. Until today, I'd hoped. I never will hope again."

Now she felt the great hand closing once more on top of hers above the broken pickets.

"Listen, Aurora," said he, "if it doesn't seem that you and I can be married, there's nothing in the world which makes it wrong for me to help you all I can--you mustn't think I didn't love you. You don't think that, do you?"

"I don't know what I think!" said she, rubbing at the ceaseless tears, so new to her. "All these matters have been out of my life--forever, as I thought. But sometimes--I've been so lonesome, you know, and so helpless--I'm tempted. It's hard for a woman to live all alone--it's almost a thing impossible--she's so lonesome--sometimes I almost think I could depend on you, even now."

"That's fine!" said he, choking up; "that's fine. I expect that's about all I had coming to me after all. So I oughtn't to be sorry--I ought to be very happy. That's about the finest thing I ever heard in all my life."

"And about the sweetest words I ever heard in all my life were what you said just now--after knowing all you do about me."

"But you won't tell me that you'll marry me now?" He bent and picked up her hand in both his great ones. "I know you will not." He kissed her hand reverently.

"Good night," said he gently. And presently she was sensible that his shambling figure was pa.s.sing away down the street under the checkered shadows of the maples.

Aurora Lane stood yet for just a moment, how long she did not know.

There came to her ear the sound of running footsteps. Her boy came down the street, pa.s.sing Horace Brooks with a wave of his hand. He reached her side now as she still stood at the gate. He was panting, perspiring a trifle.

"Fine!" said he. "Let's go in. Maybe I can sleep--I'd like to sleep."

"What kept you so late?" asked Aurora Lane. She hurried in ahead of him.

CHAPTER IX

THE OTHER WOMAN CONCERNED

The sultry night at last was broken by a breathless dawn, the sun rising a red ball over the farm lands beyond the ma.s.sed maple trees of the town. Not much refreshed by the attempt at sleep in the stuffy little rooms, Don and his mother met once more in the little kitchen dining-room where she had prepared the simple breakfast.

He did not know, as he picked at the crisp bacon strips, that bacon, or even eggs, made an unusual breakfast in his mother's household. He trifled with his cereal and his coffee, happily too considerate to mention the lack of b.u.t.ter and cream, but grumblingly sensible all the time that the bread was no longer fresh. He was living in a new world, the world of the very poor. His time had not yet been sufficient therein to give him much understanding.

He looked about him at the scantily furnished rooms, and in spite of himself there rose before his mind pictures he had known these last few years--wide green parks, with oaks and elms, stately buildings draped with ivy, flowers about, and everywhere the air of quiet ease. He recalled the fellowship of fresh-cheeked roistering youths like himself, full of the zest of life, youth well-clad, with the stamp of having known the good things of life; young women well-clad, well-appointed, also. Books, art, the touch of the wide world of thought, the quiet, the comfort, the beauty, the physical well-being of everything about him--these had been a daily experience for him for years. He unthinkingly had supposed that all life, all the world, must continue much like this. He had supposed, had he given it any thought at all, that the last meager bill in his pockets when he started home would in some magic way always remain unneeded, always unspent. He had opportunity waiting for him in his profession, and he knew he would get on. Never before in all his life had he known the widow's cruse.

So this was life, then--this little room, this tawdry, sullen town, this hot and lifeless air, this hopelessly ba.n.a.l and uninteresting place that had been his mother's home all these years--this was his beginning of actual life! The first lesson he had had yesterday; the next, yet more bitter, he must have today. The uninviting little kitchen seemed to him the center of a drab and dismal world, in which could never be aught of happiness for him or his.

"It's not much, Don," said his mother, smiling bravely as her eyes noted his abstraction. "I live so simply--I'm afraid a big man like you won't get enough to eat with me."

She did not mention her special preparations for his arrival. He did not know that the half-dozen new serviettes had been bought for his coming.