“Yes! I use the word in the broadest sense. Consciously or unconsciously, you have proclaimed it in your conversation—the House—the reviews. If you are not one of those who love their fellow-men, you, at least, have a pity for them so profound that it has become the motif of your life. It is a great cause, yours, Strone. You have made it your own. None but you can do it justice. Think of the submerged millions who have been waiting many years for a prophet to call them up from the depths. You have put on the mantle. Dare you cast it away?”
“Never in your life,” he said, “will there come to you such an opportunity as this. I offer you a place in the party which will be in the majority next session—the lawmakers. I offer you also my own personal support of the Labor measures we have discussed. It must be yes or no by to-morrow.”
When Strone let himself into his house a few moments later the room on the ground floor was almost in total darkness.
“Milly!”
No answer. Yet she was in the room, for he could hear her heavy breathing and trace the dim outline of her form upon the sofa. An ugly suspicion seized him. He turned up the gas and groaned.
An empty tumbler lay on the ground beside her. Strone bent over her. This was the woman to whom he was chained for all his days, whom he had pledged himself to love and cherish, the woman who bore his name, and who must rise with him to whatever heights his ambition and genius might command. There was no escape—there never could be any escape. He walked restlessly up and down the room. The woman slept on.
Presently he saw that she had been writing—a proceeding so unusual that he came to a standstill before the table. An envelope and a letter lay open there; the first words of the latter, easily legible in Milly’s round characters, startled him. He glanced at the address. It was to Mr. Richard Mason, Fairbanks, Gascester. Without any further hesitation, he took the letter into his hand and read it.
“Dear Dick: The last time I saw you I turned you out of this house because you asked me something as you didn’t ought. I am writing these few lines to know if you are still in the same mind. I don’t want you to make a mistake. I don’t care one brass button for you—never shall. But things have turned out so that I ain’t happy here. I never ought to have married Enoch, that’s sure. He ain’t the same class as you and me. He don’t care for me, and he never will. That’s why I reckon I’m going to leave him. Now if you want me to go to Ireland with you next journey, say so, and I’ll go. If I try to live here any longer, I shall go mad. You ain’t to think that it’s because I like you better than him, because I don’t, and no born woman in her right sense would. What I’m looking at is, that if I go away with you, he’ll be free. That’s all. There’s no other way that I can think of, except for me to do away with myself and that I dursn’t do. So if you say come, I shall be ready. Yours, Milly.”
The sheet of paper fluttered from his fingers. He turned to find her sitting up—watching him.
“You’ve been reading my letter,” she cried, with a little gasp.