ies.

As he turned away from her into the crowd of silver willows beside the
brook, she stood looking after him with the abstracted gaze of one who
dwells not in the world of objects, but in the exalted realm of visions.

CHAPTER XXI

IN WHICH PITY MASQUERADES AS REASON

As Abel crossed the poplar log he said to himself, "I shall not think of
Her again"; when he reached the end of the willows he said, "I must
not think of Her again"; and at the beginning of the kitchen garden, he
changed this to, "I will not think of Her again."

The scent of hyacinths, which floated from a row blooming on either
side of the white paling gate, whipped his senses into revolt, and
he quickened his steps in a vain effort to escape from the tormenting
fragrance. Yet even while he fled from his pain he knew in his heart
that he did not desire the strength to turn and renounce it--that to
banish the image of Molly from his thoughts was to drive the bloom from
the meadow, the perfume from the air, the sunlight from the orchard.
Spring became as desolate as winter when it was robbed of the thought of
her.

By the house a late pear-tree was in blossom, and the sunshine, falling
obliquely across it, awoke a white fire in its branches, as if piles
of new fallen snow had warmed suddenly to a reflected flame. Beneath
it Sarah Revercomb was sowing portulaca seeds in a rockery she had made
over a decaying stump. Her back was strained with bending, but not once
had she stopped to gaze at the glorified pear-tree overhead. All her
life she had distinguished carefully between the aristocracy and the
common herd of blossoms, and not all the magic gilding of the spring
sunshine could delude her into regarding the useful product of a
fruit-tree as a flower.

"I don't see why you want to go wearin' yo' Sunday clothes every day,
Abel," she observed as he was about to pass her.

"Why shouldn't I?" he retorted with the defiance of despair.

Something in his voice caused the woman who had borne him to raise
herself from her stooping posture, and stare at him with an amazed and
incredulous expression, as if she were asking herself when and where
she could have given him birth. In her mental vision, which saw only one
thing at a time, but saw that thing with great distinctness, the idea
of love slowly presented itself as the cause of such a reversal of the
natural order as a Sunday suit on week days. Her conceptions of life
were derived so closel