ntly, for this was his old talk, that
savored to her of ink and parchment and thoughts laid up in studied
guise, like mummies. Then she noted his poor face, and again the look
like Burr, which caused her heart to melt with the fancy of her love
in like case, and she said, with that gracious kindness which became
her well, that it was a pleasant day, and the smell of the balsam fir
was good for him.

But Lot looked at her with his great eyes set in hungry hollows, and
answered her in that stilted speech which she liked not, trying to
smile his old mocking smile with his poor lips, which only trembled
like a child's when tears are coming. "There are rivers of honey and
gardens of spices, and branches dropping balm," said Lot, "where a
man can walk but his soul cannot follow him. His soul waits outside
and strives to taste the sweet when he swallows it, and smell the
balm and the spices when he breathes them in, but cannot; and that is
only good for a man which is good for his soul."

"I don't know what you mean," said Madelon, shortly.

"I mean that I am outside all the good of this world, since the one
good which I crave and cannot have is the gate to all the rest," said
Lot. Then suddenly he cried out passionately, lifting up his face to
the sky, "O God, why need it be so? Why need a man be a bond-slave to
one hunger? Why need this one woman be the angel with the flaming
sword before all the little pleasures I used to taste and love? Why
need she come between me and the breath of the woods, and the incense
of the fields, and their secrets which were to me before my own, so I
can take no more delight in them?"

Madelon looked at him half in pity, half in proud resentment. "If it
is so," she said, "it was not of my own accord I came; you know that,
Lot Gordon. I meant no harm to you, and the harm that I did you
brought upon yourself. I would not have come here to-day if I had
known you were here and that it would disturb you."

"You could not have helped coming," said Lot. "I have been here since
morning, and you have been here all the while."

"Why do you talk so, Lot Gordon?" cried Madelon, angrily, for Lot's
covert meanings fretted her straightforwardness beyond endurance.
"You know that I have just come here!"

"You came here when I did," said Lot, "when the fields were dewy. You
held up your skirts and stepped daintily. I went ahead and you
followed, high-kilted, pointing your steps among the wet grasses like