She thought to herself that he was thinner, and that the red flush on his cheeks was the flush of fever and not of the summer sun.
"How do you do, Lot ?" she said.

Madelon's cheeks were a splendid red; her green sunbonnet hung by its strings low on her neck, and her head, with black hair clinging to her temples in moist rings, was thrust out from the green tangle of vines like a flower.

When Lot did not answer at once, but stood pale and trembling, as if an icy wind had struck him, before her, she pulled the pricking vines loose from her dress, and came out.

"How do you do, Lot ?" she said, again.

Still Lot did not answer, and after a minute she turned with impatient dignity as if to enter her fastness again; but then Lot spoke.
"Like mankind," he said, "'tis not well, and it tends to death, but we were born with a lash at our backs to do it." Madelon knit her brows impatiently, for this was his old talk, that savored to her of ink and parchment and thoughts laid up in studied guise, like mummies.