tures could have done. It had reconciled him to her
presence in the very moment that made him conscious of the strength of
his pity.

Presently, as they drove through the burned out clearing, she spoke
again.

"I wonder why you are always so good to me, Abel?"

He liked the honest sound of the words, and he did not know that before
uttering them she had debated in her heart whether it was worth while
to marry Abel since she could not marry Mr. Mullen. Marriage, having
few illusions for her, possessed, perhaps for that reason, the greater
practical value. She was unhappy with her stepmother in a negative way,
but so impervious had she become to casual annoyances, that she
hardly weighed the disadvantages of her home against the probable
relinquishment of Mrs. Mullen's washing day after her marriage to Abel.
Her soul was crushed like a trapped creature in the iron grip of a
hopeless passion, and her insensibility to the lesser troubles of
life was but the insensibility of such a creature to the stings of the
insects swarming around its head. The outcome of her drive with Abel
aroused only a dull curiosity in her mind. Some years ago, in the days
before Mr. Mullen, she would probably have fallen a helpless victim to
the miller had his eyes wandered for an instant in her direction. But
those days and that probability were now over forever.

Unfortunately, however, it is not given to a man to look into the soul
of a woman except through the inscrutable veil of his own personality.
Had Abel pierced that purple calico dress and witnessed the pathetic
struggle in Judy's bosom, his next words would hardly have been uttered.

"I wish I could do something to make you happier, Judy."

She looked at him with mysterious, brooding eyes, and he was conscious
again of the attraction, as subtile and as penetrating as a perfume,
which she exhaled in the stillness, and which vanished as soon as she
broke the quivering intensity of the silence. That this attraction was
merely the unconscious vibration of her passion for another man, which
shed its essence in solitude as naturally as a flower sheds its scent,
did not occur to him. Without his newly awakened pity it could not have
moved him. With it he felt that he was powerless to resist its appeal.

"Why shouldn't I be good to you, Judy?" he repeated.

Tears overflowed her eyes at his words. Looking at her, he saw her not
as she was, but as he desired that she should be; and this de