He pleaded with her: "I have tried honourably and failed--you have tried honourably and failed.

Isn't the sting of impotent failure enough to meet without striving against a hopeless love ?" He approached her and said softly: "I love you Shirley--don't drive me to desperation.

Must I be punished because you have failed?
It's unfair.

The sins of the fathers should not be visited upon the children." "But they are--it's the law," said Shirley with resignation.
"The law ?" he echoed.
"Yes, the law," insisted the girl; "man's law, not God's, the same unjust law that punishes my father--man's law which is put into the hands of the powerful of the earth to strike at the weak." She sank into a chair and, covering up her face, wept bitterly.
Between her sobs she cried brokenly: "I believed in the power of love to soften your father's heart, I believed that with God's help I could bring him to see the truth.
I believed that Truth and Love would make him see the light, but it hasn't.

I stayed on and on, hoping against hope until the time has gone by and it's too late to save him, too late! What can I do now?
My going to Washington is a forlorn hope, a last, miserable, forlorn hope and in this hour, the darkest of all, you ask me to think of myself--my love, your love, your happiness, your future, my future! Ah, wouldn't it be sublime selfishness ?" Jefferson kneeled down beside the chair and taking her hand in his, tried to reason with her and comfort her: "Listen, Shirley," he said, "do not do something you will surely regret.