red out in broken words her wrath
against Dorothy Fair, and her pity for him. And all this she did in
utter self-despite and forgetfulness, not caring if he should
discover how great her love for him still was, believing fully that
his whole heart had belonged to the other girl, and was breaking for
her, and arguing thence no good for herself.

"She shall never marry him, that I swear to you, Burr," she cried,
passionately, "and in time she may turn to you again; there is no
faith in her."

Burr listened a while bewildered, not fully knowing nor asking what
she meant, letting his head rest against her bosom, as if he were a
child whom she comforted.

"Burr, you shall have her, you shall have her yet!" she said, over
and over, as if Dorothy were a sweetmeat for which he longed, until
at last a great shame and resolution seemed to go over him like a
wave, and he put her away and rose up.

"Madelon," he said, "you don't know. Listen. You will scorn me after
this--you will never look at me again, but listen: Dorothy must never
know, for all the slight of this last must come from her and not from
me, since she is a woman and I a man; but you shall know the whole
truth. I never loved Dorothy Fair, Madelon, not as I love you, as God
is my witness. She was pretty to look at, and I liked--but you cannot
understand the weakness of a man that makes him ashamed of himself. I
left you, and--I went--courting her because she was Parson Fair's
only daughter, and I was poor, and that was not all the reason. I
liked her pretty face and her pretty ways well enough, but all the
time it was you and you alone in my heart; and, knowing that, I left
you, though I was a man. I turned Judas to my own self, and denied
and would have sold the best that was in me. Now you know the truth,
Madelon Hautville."

Madelon looked at him. Her lips parted, as if her breath came hard.

Burr made as if to pass on without another word, but she held out her
hand to stop him, though she did not touch him.

"Stop, Burr," she said, with a strange, almost oratorical manner,
that he had never seen in her before. It was almost as if she mounted
before his eyes a platform of her own love and higher purposes.
"Listen to me," she said. "That night when I was in such terrible
anger with you that for a second I would have killed you, I put it
out of your power forever to do anything that could turn me against
you again. I broke my own spirit that night, Burr. The