, and complained like any old woman of his increasing
aches and pains. Still his cunning availed little, although he did
not dream of it.

He went not among the gossips himself, and no one as yet had ventured
to approach him with the rumor that was fast gaining ground.

No one had ventured to broach the matter to the Hautville men, for
obvious reasons. "I wouldn't vally your skin if that fellar overheard
what you was sayin' of when he come up the road, Joe Simpson," one
loafer drawled to another, when Eugene left the store that afternoon
and had disappeared going the long way home.

"Hush up, will ye!" whispered the other, glancing around pale under
his unshaven beard as if he feared Eugene might yet be there. The
Hautville men, however, hearing nothing, and saying nothing about the
matter to each other, had always, among themselves, a subtle exchange
of uneasy thought concerning it. If one sat moodily by and moved out
of her way without a word while Madelon prepared a meal, the others
knew what it meant. They also knew well the meaning of each other's
glances at her, and sudden lowering of brows. Madelon herself did not
know. When she had come home that Sunday night, and announced that
she was not going to be married at all, she had not understood the
sharp questioning, and then the stern quiet that followed upon it.
She had told them simply that Lot said that his lungs were gone; that
he had ascertained the fact himself through his own knowledge of
medicine; that he could only live a wreck of a man, if at all, and,
knowing it was so, had made up his mind that he would not marry.

Lot had indeed told her so, and had made her believe it, doing away
with much of the force of his giving her up for the sake of his love.
It is difficult in any case for one to understand fully the love to
which he cannot respond, for involuntarily the heart averts itself
from it like an ear or an eye, and misses it like the highest notes
of music and colors of the spectrum.

Madelon had stared dumbly at Lot when he told her she was free, and
for a moment indeed had struggled with a consciousness which would
have stirred her at least into pity and gratitude and remorse, which
she had never known, had not Lot recovered himself and spoken again
in his old manner. He tapped himself on his hollow chest. "After
all," he said, "'tis best you are not seduced like most of your sex
into making the accessories of life supply the lack of the primal