16/26 Still he loved his sister with all his heart, although he never in his life had seen anything just as she saw it. He did not dream that Madelon's calm broke before his red-satin shoes, and that she was sitting alone before the kitchen fire with them in her lap, weeping bitterly. She was made of stern stuff to endure the worst of things; but, after all, the pitiful little accessories of grief and death are harder to bear without weakening, because all one's powers of defence are not enlisted against them. They are sometimes the scouts that kill. But it was only for a little while. |