"I couldn't consent to that, Joe—that's the point," Ann answered, firmly. "Anything else on earth but that. I expect to provide for Nettie in a substantial way, and I expect to have a lawyer make it one of the main conditions that her income depends on her good treatment of you as long as you and she live. I expect to do that, but the other matter is different. A woman of my stamp has her pride and her rights, Joe. I've been through a lot, but I can endure just so much and no more. If—if you did come back, and we was married over again, it would go out to the world that you had taken me back, and I couldn't stand that. My very womanhood rises up and cries out against that in a voice that rings clear to the end of truth and justice and woman's eternal rights. Joe, I'm too big and pure in myself to let the world say a man who was—was—I'm going to say it—was little enough to doubt my word for the best part of my days had at last taken me back—taken me back when my lonely life's sun was on the decline. No, no, never; for the sake of unborn girl infants who may have to meet what I fell under when I was too young to know the difference between the smile of hell and the smile of heaven, I say No! We'd better live out our days in loneliness apart—you frail and uncared for, and me on here without a friend or companion—than to sanction such a baleful thing as that."
"Then I'll tell you what you let me do," Boyd said, with a flare of his old youthful adoration in his face. "Let me get down on my knees, Ann, and crawl with my nose in the dust to everybody that we ever knew and tell them that I'd begged and begged for mercy, and at last Ann had taken me back, weak and broken as I am—weak, ashamed, and unworthy, but back with her in the place I lost through my own narrowness and cowardice. Let me do that, Ann—oh, let me do that! I can't go away. I'd die without you. I've loved you all, all these years and had you in my mind night and day."
Ann was looking at the ground. The blood had mounted red and warm into her face. Suddenly she glanced down the road. Jane Hemingway was just turning into the path leading to her home; her eyes were fastened on them. She paused and stood staring.
"Poor thing!" Ann said, her moist, glad eyes fixed upon Jane. "She is as sorry and repentant as she can be. Her only hope right now, Joe, is that we'll make it up. She used to love you, too, Joe. You are the only man she ever did love. Let's wave our hands to her so she will understand that—we have come to an understanding."
"Oh, Ann, do you mean—" But Ann, with a flushed, happy face, was waving her hand at her old enemy. As for Boyd, he lowered his head to the fence and sobbed.
THE END
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANN BOYD ***