ver-weighted with
flesh. But dressed in imitation of the work of Gay's London tailor, the
miller lost the distinction which nature had given him without acquiring
the one conferred by society.

"You got my letter, Molly?" he asked--and the question was unfortunate,
for it reminded her not only of the letter, but of Gay's innocent jest
about the dove on the envelope. She had been ashamed at the instant,
and she was ashamed now when she remembered it, for there is nothing so
contagious as an active regard for the petty social values of life. In
three days she had not only begun to lose her own crudeness--she had
attained to a certain small criticism of the crudeness of Abel. Already
the difference between the two men was irritating her, yet she was still
unconscious as to the the exact particular in which this difference lay.
Her vision had perceived the broad distinction of class, though it
was untrained as yet to detect minute variations of manner. She knew
instinctively that Gay looked a man of the world and Abel a rustic, but
this did not shake in the least the knowledge that it was Abel, not Gay,
whom she loved.

"Yes, I got your letter," she answered, and then she added very softly:
"Abel, I've always known I was not good enough for you."

Her tone, not her words, checked his advance, and he stood staring at
her in perplexity. It was this expression of dumb questioning which had
so often reminded her of the look in the eyes of Reuben's hound, and as
she met it now, she flinched a little from the thought of the pain she
was inflicting.

"I'm not good and faithful, Abel; I'm not patient, I'm not thrifty, I'm
not anything your wife ought to be."

"You're all I'm wanting, anyway, Molly," he replied quietly, but without
moving toward her.

"I feel--I am quite sure we could not be happy together," she went on,
hurriedly, as if in fear that he might interrupt her before she had
finished.

"Do you mean that you want to be free?" he asked after a minute.

"I don't know, but I don't want to marry anybody. All the feeling I had
went out of me when grandfather died--I've been benumbed ever since--and
I don't want to feel ever again, that's the worst of it."

"Is this because of the quarrel?"

"Oh, know--you know, I was always like this. I'm a thing of freedom--I
can't be caged, and so we'd go on quarrelling and kissing, kissing and
quarrelling, until I went out of my mind. You'd want to make me over and
I'd want to