That morning he had been poring over "Romeo and Juliet." His imagination was afire with the sweet ardor of that other lover, and he would gladly have identified Dorothy, as she sat there, with Juliet; and so he adored her doubly.
Yet he saw only the tip of her little shoe below the blue hem of her gown, and dared not fairly glance at her face, although he bore himself with such calm ease that none could have suspected.
"It is a beautiful day," said Eugene.
"Yes," whispered Dorothy.

Somehow for the moment Eugene forgot Dorothy's marriage, and Burr and his bitter jealousy, for suddenly a strange and unwarrantable sense of possession came over him.

He looked fully at Dorothy, and scanned her drooping face, and smiled, and then Madelon came in.
Dorothy arose at once and greeted her with more of her usual manner.
Then she fumbled uneasily with a little parcel she held, and glanced at Eugene, and then at Madelon.

"I had an errand--" began Dorothy and stopped, and then Eugene said softly, still smiling, "I see you have some weighty matter to discuss," and bowed himself out with his Shakespeare book.
Then Dorothy, all trembling, and before he was fairly out of hearing across the entry in the other room, announced her errand.

She had come to beg Madelon, whose rare skill in embroidering her own floral designs was celebrated in the village, to work for her the front breadth of one of her silken gowns with a garland of red roses.