Then she noted his poor face, and again the look like Burr, which caused her heart to melt with the fancy of her love in like case, and she said, with that gracious kindness which became her well, that it was a pleasant day, and the smell of the balsam fir was good for him.
But Lot looked at her with his great eyes set in hungry hollows, and answered her in that stilted speech which she liked not, trying to smile his old mocking smile with his poor lips, which only trembled like a child's when tears are coming.

"There are rivers of honey and gardens of spices, and branches dropping balm," said Lot, "where a man can walk but his soul cannot follow him.

His soul waits outside and strives to taste the sweet when he swallows it, and smell the balm and the spices when he breathes them in, but cannot; and that is only good for a man which is good for his soul." "I don't know what you mean," said Madelon, shortly.
"I mean that I am outside all the good of this world, since the one good which I crave and cannot have is the gate to all the rest," said Lot.

Then suddenly he cried out passionately, lifting up his face to the sky, "O God, why need it be so?
Why need a man be a bond-slave to one hunger?
Why need this one woman be the angel with the flaming sword before all the little pleasures I used to taste and love?
Why need she come between me and the breath of the woods, and the incense of the fields, and their secrets which were to me before my own, so I can take no more delight in them ?" Madelon looked at him half in pity, half in proud resentment.

"If it is so," she said, "it was not of my own accord I came; you know that, Lot Gordon.