come,
galled him for the time worse than a chain, and he felt more injured
than if he had loved this girl who had jilted him; for something
which was more precious to him than love had been slighted and made
for naught.

"She does--you are mad, Burr Gordon! She was all ready to marry you.
She came to me to help on her wedding-clothes. She was all smiling
and pleased. How could she be pleased over her wedding-clothes if she
did not love you? She does, Burr! She is a child--I can talk to her.
I will make her. Let me go, Burr! You wait here, and not fret. Oh,
how pale you look! I tell you, you shall have her, Burr!"

"I tell you, Madelon, she does not love me, and I will not have you
go."

Madelon stood looking at him, her face all at once changing curiously
as if from some revelation from within. She remembered suddenly that
old scene with Eugene, and a suspicion seized her. "There's somebody
else!" she cried out, fiercely. "There's no truth in her. If she
thinks--she shall not--nor he--I will not have it so!"

"For God's sake, Madelon, don't!" said Burr, not fairly comprehending
what she said. He sat down again upon the stone, and leaned his head
upon his hands. In truth he felt dazed and helpless, as if he had
reached suddenly the mouth of many roads and knew not which to take.
The intricacy of the situation was fairly paralyzing to an order of
mind like his, which was wont to grasp, though shrewdly enough, only
the straight course of cause and effect. He revolved dizzily in his
mind the fact that he could not tell Madelon the reason which Dorothy
had given for her rejection of him, and the conviction was fast
gaining upon him that it was not the true and only reason. He held
fiercely to his loyalty to Madelon, and his shammed loyalty to
Dorothy, and his slipping clutch of loyalty to himself, and knew not
what to say nor what course to take.

Madelon, as he settled back upon the stone and bowed his head, made
towards him one of those motions which the body has kept intact from
the primitive order of things, when it was free to obey Love; then
she stood back and looked at him a moment, while indignation and that
compassion which is the very holiness of love swelled high within
her. Then suddenly she leaned forward against him in her white robes,
with the soft impetus of a white flowering tree driven by the wind,
and put her arms around him, and drew his unhappy head against her
bosom, and stroked his hair, and pou