"Aurora!
Aurora! Let me in! Will you let me in?"

She threw open the door so that the light might come. But it was late.
The town slept. No one saw the light. No one saw the man who entered her
door.

He came on slowly, bending down, groaning, almost sobbing, it seemed to
her. He entered the room, sank down into a chair. He was that pitiable
thing, a man with his nerves set loose by cataclysm of the emotions.

Not less than this had William Henderson met this day. It had shortened
actually his physical stature, had altered every line in his face. He
was twenty years and more older now than when she had seen him last. In
one short day William Henderson had burned down to a speck in the cosmic
plan. He had learned for himself how little is any man. And vanity torn
out by the roots--a megalomaniac egotism done away by a capital
operation--a life-long self-content, an ingrown selfishness, all
wrenched out at once--that sort of thing takes its toll in the doing.

William Henderson was paying his debts all at once--with interest
accrued, as Hod Brooks had said to him. It was an old, old, ashen-faced
man who turned to her at last, as he came into the little lighted room.

Neither had spoken since he came within. The door now was closed back of
him. No one without could have any inkling of what went on within this
little room.... The drawn curtains ... the low light ... the man ... the
woman ... midnight! All which had been here twenty years before for
setting, that same now was here! And if there was ruin now of what here
once was fresh and fair, if ruin lay about them now, who had wrought
that ruin?

... Yes, it had been here. It was at this very place--when she was just
starting, struggling, young--all the vague, soft, mysterious, compelling
impulses of youth and life just now hers--so strange, so strong, so
sweet, so ineffable, so indispensable, so little understood....

That had been his signal! And when he had rapped before--when he was
young and comely, not old and ashen--she could no more have helped
opening the door than the white wisps from the cottonwoods could cease
to pass upon the air in their ancient seeking, blown by the spirit of
life, coming from thither, passing thence, under an impulse soft, sweet,
gentle, unsought but irresistible.

"Will!" she said at length. "Will, what's wrong? What have you done?
What does this mean?" In some sense, swiftly, the past seemed back
again, its twenty years effaced,