id Madelon, shutting her lips hard upon
her words. She turned away.

"Madelon," said Lot.

She went towards the door as if she did not hear.

"Madelon."

She turned her white face slightly towards him and paused.

"Won't you come here to me a moment?"

"I cannot until I am driven to it!" she cried out, passion leaping
into her voice like fire. "I cannot go near you, Lot Gordon!"

She opened the door, and then she heard a sob. She hesitated a
second, then looked around; and Lot Gordon's thin body was curled
about in his chair and quivering with sobs like any child's.

Madelon closed the door, and went back and stood over him. She looked
at him with a curious expression of pity struggling with loathing, as
she might have looked at some wounded reptile.

"Well, I am here," she said, in a harsh voice.

"All my life my heart has had nothing, and now what it has it has
not," moaned Lot, as if it had been to his mother. He looked up at
her with his hollow blue eyes swimming in tears. He seemed for a
minute like a little ailing boy appealing for sympathy, and the
latent motherhood in the girl responded to that.

"You know I cannot help that, Lot," she said. "You know how you
forced me into this to save the one I do love."

"Oh, Madelon, can't you love me?"

She shrank away from him and shook her head, but still her dark eyes
were soft upon his face.

"Does not love for you count anything? I love you more than he--I do,
Madelon."

"It is no use talking, I can never love you, Lot," she said, but
gently.

"It ought to count. Love ought to count, dear. It is the best thing
in the world we have to give. And I have given it to you; oh, God,
how have I given it to you, Madelon!"

"Lot, don't--it's no use."

"Listen--you must listen, dear. You must hear it once. It can't turn
you more against me. You don't know how I have loved you--you don't
know. Listen. Never a morning have I waked but the knowledge of you
came before the consciousness of myself. Never a night I fell asleep
but 'twas you, you I lost last, and not myself. When I have been sick
the sting of my longing for you has dulled all my pain of body. If I
die I see not how that can die with me, for it is of my soul. I see
not why I must not bear it forever."

"Lot, I must go!"

"Listen, Madelon; you must listen. When I have taken my solitary
walks in the woods and pried into the secrets of the little wild
things that live there in order to turn my mi