onded with the dazzling white glitter of
silver from the cream-jugs and ewers and spoons thereon.

Then Lot threw open the fine carved doors of the cupboard, and the
shelves were covered with precious blue china, brought from over
seas, and wine-glasses like bubbles of crystal, and decanters as
graceful as plumes.

"Do you like it, Madelon?" Lot asked; and Madelon replied, as before,
that it was pretty.

Lot showed Madelon all the wealth of his house before they returned
to the sitting-room. Much had been there from his father's day, but
much had been added to please this bride, who looked at it more
coldly and with less part in it than she would have looked at the
treasures in a merchant's windows. She saw, unmoved by any pride of
possession, great canopied bedsteads, and chests of drawers whose
carven tops reached the ceiling, and mirrors in gilded frames. She
saw marvellous stores of linen damask napery in such delicate and
graceful designs, from foreign looms, as she had never dreamed. She
saw an India shawl, and lengths of silk and satin and velvet, and
turned away from it all to the obstinate contemplation and endurance
of her own misery.

At last Lot led the way back to the sitting-room. He set the candle
on the shelf, and gave a strange, beseeching glance around the room
at his books. It was as if he besought, with the irrationality of
grief, those only friends he fairly knew for help and sympathy.

Then he turned to Madelon and laid a hand on each of her shoulders,
and looked at her. "No, there is no need now," he said, when she
would have shrunk away from him; and something in his voice hushed
her, and she stood still.

"Madelon," said Lot Gordon, "tell me true, as before God. You are a
woman, and always, I have heard, a woman takes comfort and pleasure
in life with such gear as I have shown you, alone, even if she has
little else. Would not all this give you some little happiness, even
as my wife, Madelon?"

Madelon looked at Lot and hesitated. She had a feeling that her word
of reply would stab him more cruelly than her knife had done.

"Madelon, tell me!"

"Will you have the truth?"

Lot nodded.

"No, Lot."

"Madelon, I can buy you more than all this. Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Lot gave a great sigh. "Dearly bought possessions are worse than
poverty, you hold," said he. "Then, Madelon, there is no sweetening
in all this for your bondage?"

She shook her head. "I shall do my duty, as I hav