side and pressed his lips to hers, as if constrained to find some
expression for the tenderness so cruelly balked of any outflow in words.
He went quickly out, but she continued to stand motionless, in the
attitude of one startled by a sudden discovery. There was a frightened
look in her dilated eyes. Her face was flooded to the roots of her hair
with a deep flush. It was a crimson most unlike the tint of blissful
shame with which the cheeks announce love's dawn in happy hearts. She
threw herself upon the sofa, and buried her scorched face in the pillow
while her form shook with dry sobs.

Love had, in a moment, stripped the protecting cicatrice of a hard
indifference from her smarting shame, and it was as if for the first time
she were made fully conscious of the desperation of her condition.

The maiden who finds her stainless purity all too lustreless a gift for
him she loves, may fancy what were the feelings of Madeline, as love,
with its royal longing to give, was born in her heart. With what lilies
of virgin innocence would she fain have rewarded her lover! but her
lilies were yellow, their fragrance was stale. With what an unworn crown
would she have crowned him! but she had rifled her maiden regalia to
adorn an impostor. And love came to her now, not as to others, but
whetting the fangs of remorse and blowing the fires of shame.

But one thing it opened her eyes to, and made certain from the first
instant of her new consciousness, namely, that since she loved him she
could not keep her promise to marry him. In her previous mood of dead
indifference to all things, it had not mattered to her one way or the
other. Reckless what became of her, she had only a feeling that seeing he
had been so good he ought to have any satisfaction he could find in
marrying her. But what her indifference would have abandoned to him her