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 gone from him, out of his life, and between them was a barrier he could never pass—­a barrier of his own raising.

And so he made no answer, for indeed he had not heard her; but she was coming toward him now, her hands outstretched in a wondering way, wistfully, pleadingly, as though to hold back a refutation that would change the dawning light upon her face to dismay and grief again.

“It—­it is true,” she faltered.  “It has come to you too—­this change, this new life that has come to me.  It is true—­I can see it in your face.”

“Yes; it is true,” he answered, in a low voice.

“Thank God!” she whispered—­and hid her face in her hands—­and presently he heard her sob again.

A tiny cloud edged the moon, and the light faded, and it grew dark, and the darkness hid her; then softly, timidly almost it seemed, the radiance came creeping through the branches overhead again—­and then he spoke.

“Helena,” he said, steadying his voice with an effort, “you spoke of atonement a little while ago; but there is no atonement that I can make to you—­nothing that I can do to change what I would give my soul to change.  I know what it meant to you to send Thornton away to-night, for I love you now as you love him—­I know why you did it, and—­”

She was staring at him a little wildly—­her hands pressed against her cheeks.

“Love—­Thornton,” she repeated in a sort of wondering way, a long pause between the words.

“Yes,” he said gently; “I know.  Have you forgotten what you told me this afternoon?—­that you had learned—­last night—­what love was.”

She shook her head.

“I do not love Thornton,” she said in a monotone.  “And yet it is true that through him I learned what love was, what it could be—­don’t you understand?”