the doer of the deed.

"You see," he began, "we're old enough perhaps to talk plainly, plainer
than young folks can--mostly I presume they don't talk at all--but I may
talk plainly?"

"Oh, yes," said she, sighing. "I suppose we've made that certain."

"Now, now, don't say that--nothing of the sort, my dear. Your past is
out of this question altogether. You're a _widow_, that's all. Your
unknown husband is dead--he is unknown, but he is dead. That's the
record, and accepted here. And isn't that our solution--the only one in
all the world possible for us?"

She did not answer at all.

"The boy and I--I reckon the two of us could keep most of the people in
this town or in this world attending to their own business, and not
bothering about ours. Don't you believe that, Aurora? We've made a
start--a sort of preliminary demonstration already."

But still she did not answer, and, agonized now, he went on:

"I'm a plain man, Aurora, pretty ignorant, I expect. I didn't come from
anywhere--there's no family much back of me--I have had really very
little schooling, and I've had to fight my own way. I can't play
bridge--I don't know one card from another. I don't dance--there's no
human being could ever teach a dance step to me. I've never been in
society, because I don't belong there. But, as I said, I've got some
standards of a man and some feelings of a man. I love you a lot more
than you can tell from what I've said, or what I've done. It'll be a
great deal more to you than you can believe now. I'll do a great deal
more for you than you can realize. I'll give you at last--later than I
ought to have done it--something you've never had--your _life_--your
_chance_ in the world--your chance at real love and real affection and
real loyalty. You've never had that, Aurora. I couldn't offer it, for I
had my own secret to keep, and my own fight to make. But love and
loyalty--they'd be sweet, wouldn't they?"

She bent her head down upon her hands, which lay folded at the top of
the pickets of the little fence.

"Sweet--sweet--yes, yes!" he heard her murmur.

"Well, then, why not end the argument?" he said. "Why, I've seen you
here, all these years. I know every hair of your head. I have come
really to love you, all of you, as a man ought to love his wife. I can't
resist it--it's an awful thing. I don't think I'll forget--it's too late
in life for me to begin over again, it's you or nothing for me. There's
never been any other