"Madelon," he said, "you don't know. Listen. You will scorn me after this--you will never look at me again, but listen: Dorothy must never know, for all the slight of this last must come from her and not from me, since she is a woman and I a man; but you shall know the whole truth. I never loved Dorothy Fair, Madelon, not as I love you, as God is my witness. She was pretty to look at, and I liked--but you cannot understand the weakness of a man that makes him ashamed of himself. I left you, and--I went--courting her because she was Parson Fair's only daughter, and I was poor, and that was not all the reason. I liked her pretty face and her pretty ways well enough, but all the time it was you and you alone in my heart; and, knowing that, I left you, though I was a man. I turned Judas to my own self, and denied and would have sold the best that was in me. Now you know the truth, Madelon Hautville." Madelon looked at him. Her lips parted, as if her breath came hard. Burr made as if to pass on without another word, but she held out her hand to stop him, though she did not touch him. "Stop, Burr," she said, with a strange, almost oratorical manner, that he had never seen in her before. It was almost as if she mounted before his eyes a platform of her own love and higher purposes. "Listen to me," she said. "That night when I was in such terrible anger with you that for a second I would have killed you, I put it out of your power forever to do anything that could turn me against you again. I broke my own spirit that night, Burr. The wrong I would have done you outweighs all you ever have done or ever can do me. There is no wrong in this world that you can do me, if I will not take it so; and as for the wrong you may have done yourself--that only makes me more faithful to you, Burr." Burr stood looking at her, speechless. It was to him as if he saw the true inner self of the girl, which he had dimly known by half-revealings but had never truly seen before. For a minute it was not Madelon Hautville in flesh and blood who stood before him, but the ghost of her, made evident by her love for him; and his very heart seemed to melt within him with shame and wonder and worship. "Oh, Madelon!" he gasped out, at length. But Madelon turned away then. "You must go home now," said she, "and I must. Good-night, Burr." "Good-night," said Burr, as if he repeated it at her bidding. Then they passed without touching each other. Madelon went home down the lane, across the fields, and Burr went out in the silent street, whence all the wedding-guests had departed, and homeward also. Chapter XXVI