Right contentedly had she loved for a time Burr’s love for her and his tenderness, and had been stirred thereby to passion, but now she loved this other man for something better than her own sweet image in his eyes.

Never a word she said, but her hat slipped down on her shoulders, hanging by its blue strings, and she let her head lie on Eugene’s shoulder, with a strange sense of wontedness and of remembering something which had never been.

And, also, all Eugene’s fond words in her ear seemed to her like the strains of old songs which were past her memory.  Burr’s, although she had listened happily, had never seemed to her like that.

They stood together so for a few minutes, while the alder-flowers shook out sweetness, as from perfumed garments, at their side, and a bee who had left his hive and winter honey, and made that day another surprise of spring, hummed from one white raceme to another and then was away, disappearing in the blue air with a last gleam of filmy wing as behind a sapphire wall.

Neither of the lovers had knowingly heard the bee’s hum, but when it ceased the silence seemed to make an accusing sense audible to them.  They let each other go and stood apart guiltily, as if some one had entered the lane and was spying upon them.

Dorothy spoke first, without raising her pale little face, all drooped round with her curls.  “What shall I do?” she said, like a child.  She was trembling, and could scarcely control her tongue.

Eugene made no reply.  He stood looking moodily at the ground, where his nosegay of violets and alders was all scattered and trampled.

Suddenly he had the feeling as of a thief in another man’s garden, and a shame before Dorothy herself came over him.  Eugene Hautville’s principles of honor, in spite of his fiery nature, read like a primer, with no subtleties of evasion therein.  Here was another man’s betrothed, and he had wooed her away!  He had kissed her lips, which were vowed to another.  He had wronged her and Burr Gordon also.  Strangely enough, Dorothy’s own responsibility never occurred to him at all; he never dreamed of blaming her for falsity either to himself or Burr.  That little fair trembling creature, clad like a violet in her mottled blue, seemed to him at once above and below all questions of personal agency.  She bloomed like a flower in her garden, infinitely finer than those who wrangled around her and strove to gather her, and yet in a measure helpless before them.

In a moment Dorothy answered her question negatively herself:  “I will not marry Burr,” she said, without raising her head, and yet with that tone of voice which accompanies a lift of chin and stiffening of the neck muscles.

Eugene looked at her, and extended his arms as if he would take her to him again; then drew them back.  “I do not know what to counsel you,” he said, slowly.  Then his eyes fell before the sudden shame and distress in Dorothy’s.