trouble that I'm in now." Judge Henderson's voice was trembling, his
face was pale.

"You--in what way am I bound to you? Trouble--what do you mean? Why,
listen!--All your life you have lived with just one aim and purpose and
ambition in your heart--and that was yourself! Your own ambition--your
own pleasure, your own comfort--those were the things that have
controlled you always--don't I know, haven't I heard? You've been a very
leech in this town--you have taken _all_ the success in it--_all_ the
success of everybody, from _all_ its people--and used it for yourself!
It has been so common to you--you are so used to it--that you can't
think of anything else--you can't visualize anything else. You think of
yourself as the source and center of all good--you can't help
that--that's your nature. So I suppose you think you are altogether
within your rights when you tell me that I must wreck and ruin my own
life to save you and your ambition! Why, you are--you're a
_sponge_--that's what you are--you are just soaking in _all_ the
happiness of others--_all_ the success of others, I tell you--taking it
_all_ for yourself. 'Our most prominent citizen!' Great God! But what
has it cost this community to produce you--what are you asking it to
cost me and those I love? Drops in the same bucket? Food for you and
your ambition? Do you think I am going to stand that, when it comes to
me--me and him--the man I have promised--the man I love? You don't know
me! You don't know him! We'll fight!"

He sat, so astounded at this sudden outburst--the first thing of the
kind he had ever heard from any human being in all his life--that for
the time he could make no reply at all. She went on bitterly now:

"Men like you, sponges like yourself, have made what they call success
in all the ages of the world--yes, that's true. Great kings, great
cardinals, great politicians, great business men, great thieves have
made that kind of a success, that's true enough--I've read about them,
yes. Men of that sort--Judge Henderson--sometimes they stop at nothing.
They'd betray their very own. I'm not your blood, but if I were, I'd not
trust you! Men like you are so absorbed with their own vanity, their own
selfishness--they're so used to having everything given to them without
exertion, without cost, they grow regardless of what that cost may be to
the ones that do the giving. In time they begin to think themselves
apart from the rest of the world--don't you t