“I shall go away if you talk like this. I will not stay here and listen to it; you know I was not here,” said Madelon, and she paled a little, for she almost thought, used to his fanciful talk though she were, that Lot had gone mad.
“We walked towards the sun,” persisted Lot, “but you were in my shadow and needed not to cast down your eyes. I saw some red flowers, but I did not pick them for you, and I heard you stop and break the stems as you came after. When we reached the shade of the firs there I sat down, but I left the space there, where the needles are smoothest and thickest, for you, and there you sat too, all day.”
“Lot Gordon!”
“You need not mind, Madelon, for all day I looked not over my shoulder once. I saw not your face, nor touched your lips, nor your hand, nor even the fold of your dress. I harmed you not, even in my dreams, dear.”
Madelon, standing quite free of the clinging blackberry vines, held up her dark head like an empress, and looked at him. In truth she felt little pity for Lot Gordon then, for she liked not being made to follow other than Burr even in a man's dreams. Still, when she spoke it was not unkindly, for in spite of this jealousy of herself for Burr, and in spite of her inability to understand such worship of herself, when she was spent in worship of another, she remembered how she had nearly taken the life of this man, and how he had striven to shield her, though against her will, and on hard and selfish conditions, and how he had at last sacrificed himself to set her free.
“Lot,” said she, “there must be no more of this. I am almost your cousin's wife. You have no right.” And then she repeated it passionately. “I say you have no right to love me like this, if I do not love you, Lot Gordon. I will have no other man but Burr think me at his heels. I will follow him till the day of my death, but no other. I would only have married you to save his life—you know that. You know I never loved you. You have no right.”
“The right of love is every man's who sets not himself before it,” returned Lot, with sad dignity. “I will not yield that even for love of you, Madelon; but myself shall be pushed yet farther out of sight, I promise you, and you shall be pestered no more, child. Go on with your berry-picking.”
A great mound of rock uplifted itself like the swelling crouch of some fossil animal among the sweet ferns and the wild scramble of vines. Lot sank down upon it panting for breath. He leaned his head wearily forward between his hands, his elbows resting on his knees.
Madelon looked at him hesitatingly; she opened her mouth as if to speak, then was silent. She looked at the high vines, black with fruit, then at the field beyond, as if half minded to go away and leave them.
Finally she fell to picking again without a word. Lot coughed once, but he did not speak. Madelon kept glancing at him as she picked. Compunction and pity softened more and more her fiery heart, the more so since she felt the guilt of happiness in the face of the woe of another upon her. Finally she said, with that fond reversion to the little homely truths and waysides of life with which the feminine mind strives often to comfort, that she would put up for him a jug of her blackberry cordial, and furthermore that she hoped his cough was better. She said it with half-constrained kindness, not looking up from her berry-picking; but Lot lifted his head and thanked her and said the cough was nearly cured, with eagerness to respond to grace, like a child who has been chidden.