dusky
windings of the maze.

As Abel approached, Molly was moving slowly away from him, her long
black skirt, which had been made to fit Mrs. Gay, trailing over the
snowdrops in the path. When she turned at the end of the walk, there
was the faintest hesitancy in her manner before she came forward with a
smile and an outstretched hand. In some subtle way she had changed--he
felt it before she reached him--before she uttered a word. He had never
seen her in a long dress until to-day; and in putting on Mrs. Gay's gown
she seemed to have clothed herself in that lady's appealing and pensive
manner. The black skirt, flowing between them on the grass, divided them
more completely than the memory of their quarrel. He was chilled because
it made her appear reserved and distant; she was embarrassed because
she had not yet learned to walk in a train, and while it pleased and
flattered her with a sense of dignity, it also caused her to feel
awkward and unnatural in her movements, as if she were not "playing up"
successfully to the part that had been assigned her. She had learned
a good deal in three days, and she was still a little confused by the
endeavour to understand all of her lessons. Sincere as her sorrow was
for Reuben, her youth and a certain quickness of observation had kept
her mindful of every change through which she had passed, of every
detail which distinguished life at the "big house" from life in the
overseer's cottage. She had learned, for instance, the necessity, in
such circumstances, of eating as if it were an utterly indifferent
matter, and yet of coming to one's meals dressed as elaborately as if
one were on one's way to church. Kesiah had taught her much; but
from Gay, with his abundant kindliness, his self-possession, his good
clothes, she had learned incomparably more. Kesiah had shown her the
external differences in "things," while Gay had opened her eyes to the
external differences that might count in men. Until she knew Gay she
had believed that the cultivation of one's appearance was a matter that
concerned women alone. Now, when moved by some unfortunate impulse of
respect for her mourning, Abel showed himself before her in his Sunday
clothes, she was conscious of a shock which she would never have felt in
the old days in the overseer's cottage. In his working dress, with his
fine throat bared by his blue shirt, there was a splendid vitality about
her lover beside which Jonathan appeared flabby and o