He came on slowly, bending down, groaning, almost sobbing, it seemed to her. He entered the room, sank down into a chair. He was that pitiable thing, a man with his nerves set loose by cataclysm of the emotions.

Not less than this had William Henderson met this day. It had shortened actually his physical stature, had altered every line in his face. He was twenty years and more older now than when she had seen him last. In one short day William Henderson had burned down to a speck in the cosmic plan. He had learned for himself how little is any man. And vanity torn out by the roots--a megalomaniac egotism done away by a capital operation--a life-long self-content, an ingrown selfishness, all wrenched out at once--that sort of thing takes its toll in the doing.

William Henderson was paying his debts all at once--with interest accrued, as Hod Brooks had said to him. It was an old, old, ashen-faced man who turned to her at last, as he came into the little lighted room.

Neither had spoken since he came within. The door now was closed back of him. No one without could have any inkling of what went on within this little room.... The drawn curtains ... the low light ... the man ... the woman ... midnight! All which had been here twenty years before for setting, that same now was here! And if there was ruin now of what here once was fresh and fair, if ruin lay about them now, who had wrought that ruin?

... Yes, it had been here. It was at this very place--when she was just starting, struggling, young--all the vague, soft, mysterious, compelling impulses of youth and life just now hers--so strange, so strong, so sweet, so ineffable, so indispensable, so little understood....

That had been his signal! And when he had rapped before--when he was young and comely, not old and ashen--she could no more have helped opening the door than the white wisps from the cottonwoods could cease to pa.s.s upon the air in their ancient seeking, blown by the spirit of life, coming from thither, pa.s.sing thence, under an impulse soft, sweet, gentle, unsought but irresistible.

"Will!" she said at length. "Will, what's wrong? What have you done?

What does this mean?" In some sense, swiftly, the past seemed back again, its twenty years effaced, so that she thought in terms of other days.

He raised his head. "What, you speak to me? You said 'Will'? Oh, Aurie, Aurie, don't!--I can't stand it. I'm not good enough for this."

"What's happened?" she insisted. "Why are you here?"

He sat, his lips loosely working now, his eyes red, his face flabby, his gray hair tumbled on his temples. It was as though all life's excesses and indulgences had culminated and taken full revenge on him in this one day.

"And you can say that to me?" he murmured. It was very difficult for him to talk. He was broken--he was gone--he was just an old man--a sh.e.l.l, a rim, a ruin of a man, now seeing himself as he actually had been all these years--G.o.d knows, a pitiable sight, that, for many and many a man of us all.

"I'm--I'm afraid, Will! Last night--it broke me, someway--I don't think much more can happen.... I can't think--I can't pull together, someway.... I was going down to the bridge tonight.... But I thought of Don."

"But you couldn't think of _me_, Aurora?--Have you ever, in all these years?"

She made him no answer at all.

"No. You could only hate the thought of me," he said. "What a coward I've been, what a cur! Ah, what a coward I've been all these years!"

"I wish you wouldn't, Will," she said. Dazed, troubled, she was trying to think in terms of the present; trying, as she had said, to pull together. "You are Don's father.... Well, you were a man, Will," she added, sighing. "I was only a woman."

She had neither sarcasm nor resentfulness in her words. It was simply what she had learned by herself, in her own life, without any great horizon in the world.

"It was pretty hard sometimes," said she, after a time, slowly. "I had to contrive so much. Putting the boy through college--it began to cost more the last four years--so much more than we had supposed it would.

You know, sometimes I was almost----" She flushed and paused.

"What was it, Aurie?"

"At one time not long ago, the bills were so large that we had to pay--it was so hard to get the money, I was almost on the point of going to you--for him, you know--and to ask you for a little help. But that's all over now."

"Oh, I ought to have come through--I ought to have owned it all up!"

"Yes, Will, you ought."

"Why did you keep it--why didn't you name me? I always thought, for a long time, that you would, that you must."

"I don't know. Don't ask me anything. But at least, Don's out now. Thank G.o.d! he's clear--he's innocent, and they all know it now. They can't keep him down, can they? He won't have as hard a time as I've had? He'll succeed, won't he? He must, after it all!"

"Yes," said the man, shaking as in a palsy, "after it all, he ought to, and I pray he may." But he could talk no more.

"And he's such a fine boy! I don't see how you could----"

"How I could disown him? Yesterday?"

She nodded. "I can't understand that. I never could. I can't see how you could hesitate. I--I wish you hadn't. I--I can't forgive that." Her voice rose slightly at last, a spot of color came into her pallid cheek.

"I didn't have the courage to come through square, and that's the truth about it. I've never had, all along. Maybe a man doesn't have the same feeling that a woman does about a child--I don't know. But I was worse than the average man--more selfish. I got caught up in politics, in business. Success?--well, I saw how hard it is. I thought I had to keep down the past. Well, it's over now. But as for you----"

"I lived it down for a good many years. Don's twenty-two now."

"But how could you keep that secret--what made you? Why didn't you go into court and force me to do my duty to my own flesh and blood--and to you?"

"I don't know," she answered. "I told you, I don't know. Maybe I was proud. Maybe I thought I'd wait till you shamed your own self into coming. I'm glad you've come now, at last. I don't know--maybe I thought some day you would."

"I'm not Judge Henderson!" he broke out bitterly. "I'm Arthur Dimmesdale! I ought to be in the pillory, on the gallows, before this town. I'm a thief and a coward, and I deserve no pity, neither of man nor of G.o.d himself. You've carried all the blame, when I was the one to blame. And I can't see why you didn't tell, Aurie--what made you keep it all a secret?"

"I don't know," said she simply again. "I don't know. It seemed--it seemed somehow to me--_sacred_--what was between us! It was--Don! I have never told anyone. I was waiting, hoping you'd come--for your own sake.

Why should I rob you of your chance?"

"Thank G.o.d that you did keep the secret!" he broke out at length. "It's all the chance I have left to be a man. At least I'll confess the truth."

"Why, Will, what do you mean? I'll never tell. I told you I wouldn't--I swore I wouldn't.

"I'll be going away before long, Will," she added. "I can't stay here now. I suppose Don and I will go away somewhere. I'm glad he's found a good girl. Ah!--Anne, she's splendid.... I'm not going to make any objections to his marrying _her_. And, you see, I'll know that you came here. And some time he will know--who was his father. He doesn't, yet.

In justice, some time he will. G.o.d will attend to that, not any of us."

"All the world shall know it, Aurora!" said the man at her side. "I saw them a little while ago, walking together. He was listening to the drums. He was looking at the Flag--and so was she. They are up at my house now. They're happy. G.o.d bless them."

"But they don't know--you've not told?"

"No, I've been walking out in the country--all evening. I was up there--on the road to the Calvary Cemetery. I'm going to tell Don the truth tomorrow.

"But look at your house--your poor little home." He cast about him a gaze which took in the ruin that had been made of all her belongings.

"Oh, my G.o.d, Aurora! It was my own fault. It was _I_ who made that mob a possible thing. And you were a good woman. You've been a good woman all the time. I never knew before what a splendid thing a woman can be.

Why--strong!... And you called me 'Will' just now. What made you do that?"

"I don't know," said Aurora Lane. "I suppose a woman never does quite forget the--the first man of--of her life."

"But how sweet it all was," he broke out, "in spite of it all, in spite of everything! Oh, Aurie, don't you remember when I'd come and tap there on the window--and you'd come and let me in? I don't deserve even that memory ... a woman like you--and a man like me. But I can't forget it.

And you let me come in now--that's my one last joy left for all my life.

Why, it's the one thing I can never think of again without a shudder.

Yes, I've come without your asking--and you--you've let me in.

"Aurie," he went on, "that's what leaves me so helpless. I know what I deserve--but I don't want to be despised.... I want more than I deserve!

I've always had more than I deserved. It's about all any man can say.

It's life itself, I suppose. I don't know what it is. But, Aurie, Aurie, I do see a thousand things now I never saw before."