"Oh, M's. Lytton, don't fool yourself about this duty! It's up to a man an' a woman to take love, to take happiness, when it comes. You can't set still an' watch it go by an' hope to have it come again; real happiness don't happen but once in most of our lives. I know. I've been down ... I've been happy, too ... I know!
"An' duty! Why, ma'am, duty like you think you ought to do, is waste! You're young, you're healthy, you're pretty. You'll waste your best years, you'll waste your health, you'll waste your looks on duty! You'll waste all your love; you'll get old an' bitter an'....
"If the's anything under heaven that's a crime, it's wasted love! Oh, M's. Lytton, I wasted my love when I was a kid, 'cause I didn't know better. I sold mine for money. For God's sake, don't sell yours for duty! If the's anything your God meant folks to do was to get what joy they can out of life. He wouldn't want you to think of bein' Ned Lytton's wife as ... as your duty. He ... God ain't that kind, M's. Lytton; he ain't!"
"Nora, Nora, don't say these things!" Ann pleaded. "You're wrong, you must be! Don't tempt me to ... these new ways ... don't...."
"New!" the girl broke in. "It ain't new, what I've been sayin'. It's as old as men an' women. It's as old as th' world. Th' things you try to make yourself believe are th' new ones. Love was old before folks first thought about duty. It seems new, because you ain't ever let yourself see straight ... you never had to until now."
"Nora, stop I You must stop! You can't be right ... you can't be!"
The waitress trembled against Ann and commenced to cry under the strain of her earnestness.
"But I know I'm right, M's. Lytton, I know I am! I know what you're doin'. Do—don't you see that you wouldn't be much different from what I was, if you went back to your husband, hatin' him an' lovin' another? Happiness comes just once; it's a sin to let it go by!"
Slowly Ann withdrew her embrace from the girl. She sat with hands limp in her lap until Nora's sobbing had subsided to mere long-drawn breaths; then she rose and walked to the window, looking out into the moonlit night. And when Nora, drying her eyes, regaining control of her emotions, started to speak again she saw that Ann was lost in thought, that it was unnecessary to argue further, so she went quietly from the room. The rattle of the knob, the sound of the closing door did not rouse the woman she left behind. Ann only stared out at the far hills which were a murky blot in the cold light; stared with eyes that did not see, for out of the storm of that night a new creature was coming into active life within her and the re-birth was so wonderful that it quite deadened her physical senses.