green; and the trees limned out like fairy things against the night; and
the calm light flooded the little cottage with its hidden walls where
the ivy and the creepers grew, and lingered over the trellises to drink
the fragrance of the flowers that peeped out from their leafy beds. And
upon Madison's face crept slowly the anguish that was in his soul--until
it was mirrored there--until unconsciously it answered her where words
would have been useless things. Like some white-robed, sorrowing angel,
she seemed, as she stood there before him--the brown eyes full of
shadow, troubled; the sweet face tear-splashed; the little figure in its
simple muslin frock, pitiful in its brave defiance. And pure--just God,
how pure she looked!--the brow stainless white under the mass of dark,
coiled hair; the perfect throat of ivory. And--and the misery that was
in every feature of her face, in every line of her poise--and he had
brought her that--_he_ had brought her to that--and now when he loved
her as he might have loved her once and known her love in return, when
his heart cried out for her, when she was all in life he cared for, she
was gone from him, out of his life, and between them was a barrier he
could never pass--a barrier of his own raising.

And so he made no answer, for indeed he had not heard her; but she was
coming toward him now, her hands outstretched in a wondering way,
wistfully, pleadingly, as though to hold back a refutation that would
change the dawning light upon her face to dismay and grief again.

"It--it is true," she faltered. "It has come to you too--this change,
this new life that has come to me. It is true--I can see it in your
face."

"Yes; it is true," he answered, in a low voice.