"Wait now, let us go on with the argument just a little further, my dear!" said he gently.
"We have argued too long already," she said faintly. "You must go. Please go—please don't talk to me. You must not."
"I wish I could agree with you," said he, disturbed and frowning, "because I don't want to make you any more unhappy. But listen, it just seemed to me that this was providential—I had to come to you and tell you what I have told you tonight. Why, widows remarry—time and again widows marry."
"Yes, widows!" He could barely hear the sob which she stifled in her throat.
"Well, then," said he, "how about you and me? I don't think it's a fair argument, but I ought to point out to you that perhaps I've got a chance in the world. They wanted me, for instance, to make the run for the senatorship—against Judge Henderson. Today I agreed with him not to accept the candidacy. In return he agreed to drop that case against Don. Well, you've traded me out of the United States Senate, Aurora. But I made that trade—for you and the boy."
She looked up at him in sudden astonishment. She could not evade the feeling of shelter in his great presence as he stood there, speaking calmly, absolutely in hand, a grotesque and yet a great soul—yes, a great soul as it seemed to her, so used to littler souls. After all, she never really had known this man. Sacrifice? Had he not given freely, as a sacrifice, the greatest gift a man has—his hope for power and preferment? And he spoke of it as though it were a little thing. Aurora Lane was large enough to know a large act, belittled though it were by the doer of the deed.
"You see," he began, "we're old enough perhaps to talk plainly, plainer than young folks can—mostly I presume they don't talk at all—but I may talk plainly?"
"Oh, yes," said she, sighing. "I suppose we've made that certain."
"Now, now, don't say that—nothing of the sort, my dear. Your past is out of this question altogether. You're a widow, that's all. Your unknown husband is dead—he is unknown, but he is dead. That's the record, and accepted here. And isn't that our solution—the only one in all the world possible for us?"
She did not answer at all.