“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.”