For the first time for weeks it seemed to Madelon that she had really come home, and the old familiar place did not look strange to her with the threatening light of her own future over it.

She tossed off her hood and her red cloak, and proposed with her old manner that they have some music.
The men looked at her and each other.

"She's a woman," old David muttered under his mustache, and got his viol.
Soon the grand chorus began, and Madelon sang and sang, with all her old fervor.

The brothers kept glancing at her, half uneasily, but David wooed his viol as if it were his one love in the world, and paid no attention to aught besides.
The concert lasted late that night.

It was midnight before they stopped singing and put their stringed instruments away.
Then Madelon turned to them all.