LAURA. I mean to do it! I mean to do it today; and I will never yield to him... never until he has atoned for this wrong he has done! And don't you see that I will win in the end? MONTAGUE. Yes; I see. LAURA. [Quickly.] Understand, that has nothing to do with your course. I am not asking you to spare him. You must go ahead and do your duty... you must do just what you would have done if I had never stood in the way. MONTAGUE. It is a terrible thing to me, Miss Hegan. I cannot turn back... LAURA. You must not! You must not think of it! It will be a part of my father's punishment... and he has deserved it. He has prepared that cup, and he must drink it... to the dregs! MONTAGUE. You can bear it? LAURA. It is not any question of what I can bear. It is a question of the rights of the people. I saw that quite clearly, as my father talked with me. Whether it is he who wins, or whether it is Murdock, it is always the people that lose. And, let it hurt whom it may, the people must have the truth! MONTAGUE. And then... you will be able to forgive me! Ah, what a weight you lift from me! I hardly dared to face the thought of what I had to do! [Hesitating.] And then, the thought that you mean to renounce your father's wealth... that you are going out into the world... alone... LAURA. It will not be hard for me. You cannot know how I have hated my past life. To know that my father has plundered the public... and then to give his money, and call it charity. To be flattered and fawned upon... to be celebrated and admired... and never for anything that I am, but always for my money! MONTAGUE. I understand what you feel! And see what your decision means to me... it sets me free at last! LAURA. Free! MONTAGUE. Free to speak! Miss Hegan, I came to New York, and I met these rich people, and I saw how their fortunes were poisoning their lives. I saw men who could not have a real friend in the world, because of their money. I saw young girls whose souls were utterly dead in them because they had been brought up to think of themselves as keepers of money-bags, and to guard against men who sought to prey upon them. I hated the thing... I fled from it as I would from a plague. In that world I had met a woman I might have loved... a woman who was noble and beautiful and true; and yet I dared not speak to her... I dared not even permit myself to know her... because I was a poor man, and she was rich. But now she is to be poor also! And so I may speak! LAURA. [Starting.] Oh! MONTAGUE. Miss Hegan, from the first time I met you I felt that you were the woman I should love. But then, as fate would have it, I found myself preparing to attack your father; so I said that we must never meet again. But now you see how it has happened. I have come to know you as I never hoped to know you, and I know that I love you. LAURA. I had no idea...