GODESBY.  Good for you, Julia!

WARDEN.  Don’t you put your oar in, Godesby; just let this matter rest between your sister and me!  She’s always been known as the best man in your family.

GODESBY.  You don’t choose a very conciliatory way of bringing us around!

WARDEN.  I’m not choosing any way at all; I’m striking right out from the shoulder.  There isn’t time for beating round the bush!  I’m pleading for the good name and honorable position of a perfectly innocent, a fine, woman, and for the reputation and unimpeded career of her son!  And I make that appeal as man to man and woman!

MISS GODESBY.  I have nothing to do with any one in this matter but Sterling himself, who has robbed me, and I’ll gladly see him suffer for it!

WARDEN.  Now look here, Miss Godesby, you belong to a pretty tough crowd in society, but I know at heart you’re not a bad sort!  What good will it do you?  Granted even that you don’t care for Mrs. Sterling, still don’t tell me you’re the kind of woman to take a cruel pleasure in seeing another woman suffer!  I wouldn’t believe it!  You’re not one of those catty creatures!  You’re a clever woman, and I don’t doubt you can be a pretty hard one, too, at times; but you’re just—­that’s the point now—­you’re JUST—­

MISS GODESBY. [Interrupting.] Exactly!  I’m just, an eye for an eye!  Sterling is a thief, let him get the deserts of one!

[She sits on the bench determinedly.

WARDEN.  But you can’t look at only one side!  You can’t shut your eyes to his wife’s suffering, too, and she doesn’t deserve it!  Neither does her boy deserve to share his disgrace. [He sits beside her.] Why, you have it in your power to handicap that boy through his whole life by publishing his father a criminal; or you can give that boy a fair show to prove himself more his mother’s son than his father’s, and to live an honest—­who knows—­perhaps a noble life!

MISS GODESBY.  I refuse to accept such a responsibility.  Ryder—­

WARDEN. [Rises, interrupting her.] Ryder’s word is given to be silent.

MISS GODESBY.  Well, that’s his lookout.

WARDEN.  You’ll have many a heart wrench, I’ll bet you!  You’ll have to run across the results of the harm you do to Mrs. Sterling and Richard day in and day out, year after year!  I don’t believe you realize what it means!  Why, I know you can’t bear to see a dog suffer!  I met you last week on the street carrying a mangy, crippled brute of a little dog in your arms, afraid lest he’d get into the hands of the vivisectionists, and yet here you’ll let a boy and his mother—­

MISS GODESBY. [Interrupts him, struggling against a tiny emotion which he has stirred.] Stop Stop!  I don’t want you working on my feelings that way.

[She rises and turns from him

WARDEN. [Follows her.] I’m only knocking at the door of your heart.  And now because it’s opened just a tiny way, you want to shut it in my face again.  Will you leave this woman’s name fit for her to use? Won’t you make that boy’s life worth living to him?