"Yes, Aurora. Twenty years outlaws a claim in the law--for men--but not for women. Now, I take on those twenty years of yours when I take on this case. I'm clear about that. I can see this thing straight enough. This town will go into two camps. Ours is the hopeless one, as things stand now. We are the under dog. If I took this case--maybe even if I won it--I'd be hated by the men and snubbed by the women of this town. Now, I see all that clearly. And speaking of pay----" "Oh, if you would," she exclaimed, leaning toward him, her hands extended, "I'd do anything you asked me. Do you understand that--_anything_!" She paused. In the silence the little clock on the mantel ticked so loud it seemed almost to burst the walls. He sat for a long time motionless, and she went on, leaning yet more toward him. "I've thought it all over again," she said desperately. "I'd--I'd begin it again--I'd do anything--I'd do _anything_ you asked me----Why, I've nothing--nothing--oh, so little to give! But--as to what you said last night--I've thought of that. I'm ready--what is it that you wish?" He looked at her dumbly for a long time, and she thought it was in condemnation. For almost the first time she voiced in her life--continually on the defensive. "I don't understand it all," said she. "I've tried very hard since then. I was so young. I didn't know much at first--I didn't feel that it was all so wrong--I didn't know much of anything at all, don't you see?" Now he raised his great hand, his lips trembling. "Just wait a bit, my dear," said he. "We'll take what you've said as proof of your love for your own son. We'll let it stop right there, please. We'll forget what happened last night at your broken gate--we'll forget what's happened just now inside my broken gate. I told you if I ever married you I'd do it on such a basis that I could look you in the face, and you could me. That's the only way, Aurora. There's not any other way. I reckon I'll always love you--but only on the square." "But what can we do--you refuse to help us--and the boy's innocent!" "Wait, my dear," said he slowly. "I've not a woman's wit, so I can't leap on quite so fast as you do. A lawyer reads word by word. I'm still in the preliminaries, not even into the argument of this case yet." "But you have refused--you have said it meant ruin to you--I know--I mean that to everyone." "You've meant a great deal more than that to me, my dear," said Horace Brooks, "and no matter what you mean--no matter what my decision may do to my future--no matter what it may cost me in my larger ambitions, which I entertain, or once did, the same as any other man here in America--why, let it go." "But what are you going to do? I'm costing you everything, everything--and I can give you nothing, nothing--and I'm asking still of you everything, everything."