lad 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. God 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. God 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 God, 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."

She still sat, white, dumb. Only, now, her head began to move, slowly,
from side to side. He caught the evidence of negative, and a new
resolution came to him at last.

"Let it all go!" he said at length--and now indeed he was on his knees
at her side. "What I have lost is nothing. I'll never ask for office
until I have lived he