The thoughts and the dreams with
which I bought the gewgaws profane them in your eyes while I am
alive."
"I do not need them, and I cannot take them, Lot," said Madelon,
steadily.
Lot said no more. He leaned his head upon his hands again. Madelon
could hear his panting breath. She resolved that she would go away
across the fields, down the road a piece, to another berry patch that
she knew of. Still she did not go. One of those impulses which seem
to come from authority outside one's self, or else from some hidden
springs of motion which we know not of, had seized her. She looked at
Lot and moved softly away a few steps, holding her skirts clear of
the vines. Then she paused and looked again, and was away again. Her
face was resolute and wary, as if she saw something which she feared
and loathed, and yet would brave. Then she went close to Lot, and
stood still over him a minute.
"Lot," she said.
He looked up at her, wonderingly. "Are you sick, Madelon?" he cried,
and would have risen, but she motioned him back and spoke, turning
her face away the while.
"Once I asked Burr to give me the kiss that I would have killed him
for," said she, in a voice so sharpened by her stress of spirit that
it might have come out of the flames of martyrdom.
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