Through the days that came now Madelon toiled as she had never toiled before, although she had always been an industrious girl.  She had her own linen-chest, which she would take with her when she married, and now she bestirred herself to replenish the stores of the house she would leave, for the comfort of her father and brothers.  Long before dawn the gentle hum of her spinning-wheel began, although the days were lengthening, and many a time she sat plying it on her solitary hearth until after midnight.  She spent days at the great loom in the north chamber, marching back and forth before it, a straight, resolute figure of industry filling human needs, although with sweat of the brow and heart’s blood.  No happier was she for her hard toil, but it kept at least the spirit of fierce endurance alive within her, for no one succumbs entirely to misery with unfolded hands.  Then, too, she was upheld somewhat by her pride in right-doing and providing for the interests of her family.  Enough of the New England conscience she had to give her a certain comfort in holding herself to duty, like a knife to a grindstone.

The third week of April had begun when one morning Dorothy Fair came to the door.  Madelon was out in the field beside the house, laying some lengths of cloth on the green sunny levels to whiten.  The grass had turned quite green in places, and the sun was hot as midsummer.  The buds on the trees opened before one’s eyes, as if unfolded by warm fingers.  People walked languidly, for the humid heat served to force nothing to life in them but dreams; but the birds lived on their wings and called out of all the distances.

Madelon, standing up from spreading her linen, caught sight of the swing of a blue petticoat, like the swing of a blue flower, beside the house door, and went towards it directly.

But when she reached the house the blue-clad visitor had disappeared within.  Madelon entered and found Dorothy Fair in the north parlor.  Eugene had been sitting in there with his Shakespeare book, and he had opened the door, bowing and wishing her good-day, with his courtly grace of manner, although his handsome face was pale.

Dorothy was pale, also, under her blue-ribboned bonnet.  She courtesied on trembling knees, and spoke like a scared child, in spite of her training and genteel deportment.  “Can I see your sister?” she said, in a half-whisper, and she did not raise her blue eyes to Eugene’s face.

Eugene looked past her.  “I see her coming now across the field,” he said; “she has seen you and will be here presently.”

Then he bade her enter, and made way for her, like a courtier for a princess, and seated her in the north parlor in the best rocking-chair, as if it were a throne.  Then he sat down opposite her, with his Shakespeare book still on his knees.  That morning he had been poring over “Romeo and Juliet.”  His imagination was afire with the sweet ardor of that other lover, and he would gladly have identified Dorothy, as she sat there, with Juliet; and so he adored her doubly.