take classes in Applegate? Just
for you. All those winter afternoons when I drove over there to learn
things, I was thinking of you. Do you remember that when you were at
school in Applegate, you'd tell me the names of the books you read so
that I might get them?"

"Don't," she cried fiercely, "don't tell me those things, for I'll never
believe them! I'm hard and bitter inside, there's no softness in me. If
I went on my knees and prayed to love, I couldn't do it. Oh, Abel, there
isn't any love in my heart!"

"Do you remember when you kissed me?"

"No, I have forgotten."

"It was only three weeks ago."

"Yes, that was three weeks ago."

The light died slowly out of his eyes as he looked at her.

"When you speak like that I begin to wonder if any good can ever come
to us," he returned. "I've gone on breaking my heart over you ever since
you were a little girl in short dresses, and I can't remember that I've
ever had anything but misery from you in my life. It's damnable the
things I've stood and yet I've always forgotten them afterwards, and
remembered only the times you were soft and gentle and had ceased to be
shrewish. Nobody on earth can be softer than you, Molly, when you want
to, and it's your softness, after all, that has held me in spite of
your treatment. Why, your mouth was like a flower when I kissed you, and
parted and clung to me---"

"I wish you wouldn't talk about it. I hate to hear such things after
they are over."

"Such things!" He stood flicking hopelessly with a small branch he
carried at the carrot flowers in the field. "If you will tell me
honestly that you were playing with me, Molly, I'll give you up this
minute," he said.

The colour was high in her face and she did not look at him.

"I was playing with you, and I told you so the day afterwards," she
replied.

"Yes, but you didn't mean it. I can't go any further because this is Mr.
Jonathan's land."

His eyes had in them the hurt reproachful look of a wounded dog's, and
his voice trembled a little.

"I meant always--always to lead you on until I could hurt you--as I did
the others--and then throw you over."

"And now that you can hurt me, you throw me over?" he asked.

Without speaking, she held out her hand for the basket, which he was
about to fling from him.

"Then I'll never forgive you, Molly, so help me God," he added harshly;
and turning away from her, struck out across the pasture in the
direction of the mill.

Fo