"I would follow him to the foot of the gallows, if need be, Judge Henderson!" broke out Anne Oglesby in a sudden flare of passionate anger. "Ah, fine!--to give your word, your promise--to give your love, and then within an hour forget it all--to leave the one you love when the trouble comes! Is that all one gains--is that all one may expect--is that all a woman ought to do for the man she loves? Is that all she ought to expect from a man? Suppose it were I in trouble--would _he_ forget me? Would _he_ forsake me? Then shall I? You don't know me if you think that of me! "You don't know me at all," she blazed on at him, as he turned away. "I've tried to reason. Whatever my success at that, the answer's in my own heart now." (Her heart, now beating so fast under the heaving bosom on which both her hands were clasped.) "And you forget me? I--I'm in trouble now--it's awful--it's a terrible trouble that I'm in now." Judge Henderson's voice was trembling, his face was pale. "You--in what way am I bound to you? Trouble--what do you mean? Why, listen!--All your life you have lived with just one aim and purpose and ambition in your heart--and that was yourself! Your own ambition--your own pleasure, your own comfort--those were the things that have controlled you always--don't I know, haven't I heard? You've been a very leech in this town--you have taken _all_ the success in it--_all_ the success of everybody, from _all_ its people--and used it for yourself! It has been so common to you--you are so used to it--that you can't think of anything else--you can't visualize anything else. You think of yourself as the source and center of all good--you can't help that--that's your nature. So I suppose you think you are altogether within your rights when you tell me that I must wreck and ruin my own life to save you and your ambition! Why, you are--you're a _sponge_--that's what you are--you are just soaking in _all_ the happiness of others--_all_ the success of others, I tell you--taking it _all_ for yourself. 'Our most prominent citizen!' Great God! But what has it cost this community to produce you--what are you asking it to cost me and those I love? Drops in the same bucket? Food for you and your ambition? Do you think I am going to stand that, when it comes to me--me and him--the man I have promised--the man I love? You don't know me! You don't know him! We'll fight!" He sat, so astounded at this sudden outburst--the first thing of the kind he had ever heard from any human being in all his life--that for the time he could make no reply at all. She went on bitterly now: