"The boy and I—I reckon the two of us could keep most of the people in this town or in this world attending to their own business, and not bothering about ours. Don't you believe that, Aurora? We've made a start—a sort of preliminary demonstration already."
But still she did not answer, and, agonized now, he went on:
"I'm a plain man, Aurora, pretty ignorant, I expect. I didn't come from anywhere—there's no family much back of me—I have had really very little schooling, and I've had to fight my own way. I can't play bridge—I don't know one card from another. I don't dance—there's no human being could ever teach a dance step to me. I've never been in society, because I don't belong there. But, as I said, I've got some standards of a man and some feelings of a man. I love you a lot more than you can tell from what I've said, or what I've done. It'll be a great deal more to you than you can believe now. I'll do a great deal more for you than you can realize. I'll give you at last—later than I ought to have done it—something you've never had—your life—your chance in the world—your chance at real love and real affection and real loyalty. You've never had that, Aurora. I couldn't offer it, for I had my own secret to keep, and my own fight to make. But love and loyalty—they'd be sweet, wouldn't they?"
She bent her head down upon her hands, which lay folded at the top of the pickets of the little fence.
"Sweet—sweet—yes, yes!" he heard her murmur.
"Well, then, why not end the argument?" he said. "Why, I've seen you here, all these years. I know every hair of your head. I have come really to love you, all of you, as a man ought to love his wife. I can't resist it—it's an awful thing. I don't think I'll forget—it's too late in life for me to begin over again, it's you or nothing for me. There's never been any other woman for me—and that ought at least to speak for me. There's been no other man for you. So why not end it? The world's been cruel enough for you as it is. I'll not say it hasn't been cruel to me, too. I've sat tight and eaten my heart. I've had to fight, too. But don't I understand you, your fight, what it means to buck a game where all the cards are stacked? Don't I know?"
"It has been cruel, yes," said she at length, finding herself able to speak, "but it seems it has not been quite so cruel as it could be until—until now."
"Why, what do you mean? Am I cruel? Why?"
"You said—you said something about my being a widow."
He nodded. "Yes. I pick you up now—it's as though I find you new—I know you now at a later stage altogether in your life. You've grown. I see you as new and fresh as though you were just risen from the sea.... And all the past is nothing to me."