Read "Madelon" by Mary E. Wilkins online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
When the mind has been strained up and held to the furthering of some painful end and then suddenly released, it sinks back for a time, alive to nothing but the consciousness of freedom and rest. Even the thought for the future, which is its one weapon against fate, is laid down. Madelon, for a few days after the postponement of her marriage, went about in a kind of negative happiness. There are few who have so much to bear that there is not left to them at least the joy of escape from another trial. Madelon had lost her lover indeed, but she was let loose for a while from a worse trouble than that.
When Madelon entered the house that Sunday night her face was so changed that it held her father's and her brothers' casual glances. Her cheeks were brilliant with the damp wind, her eyes gleaming, her mouth half smiling as she looked around. For the first time for weeks it seemed to Madelon that she had really come home, and the old familiar place did not look strange to her with the threatening light of her own future over it. She tossed off her hood and her red cloak, and proposed with her old manner that they have some music.