"You didn't really think I'd ever take you back, did you, Will?" she went on, eager to be fair even now. "I was only sorry for you, that's all. God knows, I'm sorry for any human being, woman or man, that has to go through hell as I have. Twenty years? That'll leave you old, Will. But—go serve it, in this town, as I have! And God have mercy on your soul!"
She flung the door yet wider, and stumbling, he began to grope toward it. The black wall of the night lay beyond.
Slowly the color faded from the cheeks of the woman now left alone yet again. She sank down, crumpling, white, her face marble clear, her eyes staring straight ahead at what picture none may ask. Then, as the white column of her throat fluttered again, she beat one hand slightly against the other, ere she crushed them both together in her lap, ere she flung them wide above her.
"God! God!" cried Aurora Lane. "If it wasn't right, why did He say, 'Suffer little children'? It was in the Book ... little ... little children ... the Kingdom of Heaven!"
It was more than an hour before she, too, rose and, stepping toward the door, looked out again into the night. A red light showed here or there. Homes—the homes of our town.
By Emerson Hough
The Broken Gate
The Man Next Door
The Magnificent Adventure
Let Us Go Afield
Out of Doors
The Story of the Cowboy
The Girl at the Halfway House