My cough--the doctor--we will wait--Madelon!" Lot's broken speech ended in a pitiful cry of her name.
"Why do you do this ?" she asked, looking at him with her white, stern face, through which an expression of joy, which she tried to keep back, was struggling.
"I am not as well, Madelon," Lot answered, with sudden readiness and sad dignity.

"If you do not object to the change of time we had best defer it." Madelon looked away.

"There is no need of any pretence between us," she said; "I am sorry you are not as well." "But not sorry that our wedded bliss must be deferred ?" "No," said she.

Then she went away, and that time Lot did not call her back.

She heard him coughing hard as she went through the entry.
When she came out of the house into the tumultuous darkness of the spring night, and went down the road with the south wind smiting her with broadsides of soft air, and the living sounds of water ahead and on either hand of her, she was happy--in spite of Burr, in spite of everything--with the happiness of one to whom is granted a respite from death..