Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/293

 The passionate outburst passed—and she was on her feet again, facing him.

"You are clever—clever!" she cried fiercely. "But you shall not play with me—you shall not trick me—I meant every word I said!"

But now Madison made no answer. The moonlight bathed them both in its clear, white radiance; and touched the sward, shading it to softest green; and the trees limned out like fairy things against the night; and the calm light flooded the little cottage with its hidden walls where the ivy and the creepers grew, and lingered over the trellises to drink the fragrance of the flowers that peeped out from their leafy beds. And upon Madison's face crept slowly the anguish that was in his soul—until it was mirrored there—until unconsciously it answered her where words would have been useless things. Like some white-robed, sorrowing angel, she seemed, as she stood there before him—the brown eyes full of shadow, troubled; the sweet face tear-splashed; the little figure in its simple muslin frock, pitiful in its brave defiance. And pure—just God, how pure she looked!—the brow stainless white under the mass of dark, coiled hair; the perfect throat of ivory. And—and the misery that was in every feature of her face, in every line of her poise—and he had brought her that—he had brought her to that—and now when he loved her as he might have loved her once and known her love in return, when his heart cried out for her, when she was all in life he cared for, she was