"I know—but you must. We're going to dedicate this paper to one thing—the truth. Sometimes the truth isn't easy to tell. The telling of it may bring you—it may—oh, don't you see—those closest to you—dearest to you—they may be the least able to stand the truth. You don't know what it means. You can't. Are you ready to forsake—all? ... I mean that literally, Miss Wynrod." She had never seen him so utterly excited, so moved to the depths. "Are you ready to give up everything that has been dear to you in the days that are gone, for this crazy ideal? For if you are not," he finished with a solemnity that brought a queer lump to her throat, "I had much rather that you stopped before you began."
She rose and faced him, and her eyes looked steadily into his. They gleamed dull grey, like the hulls of battleships on the fighting line, and her chin was grimly firm. The stock from which she sprang had been a pioneering stock, and none who bore the name of Wynrod, in days when life was simple but hard, had turned back when once their hands were on the plough. Their sturdy courage was in her blood, and the echo of that Hugh Wynrod who had defied his King and left all that life had held dear for him, to seek a new life in a new world, for the sake of an ideal, sounded in her vibrant voice.
"I understand, Mr. Good. I am ready—for anything."
"It means—fight—always," he said softly.
"I have played always. I want—fight."
"Then shake," he cried. "We'll go through—to the end!"
"To the end," she echoed, as she seized his outstretched hand. Then the tension snapped suddenly.
"How absurd," she laughed. "We're behaving like pirates in a melodrama. Let's go in the other room and be rational people."
But Good did not even attempt to smile.